Smokies Life is pleased to announce that Into the Mist: Tales of Death and Disaster, Mishaps and Misdeeds, Misfortune and Mayhem in Great Smoky Mountains National Park Volume I is now available in e-book format on popular electronic reader platforms. It is the second Smokies Life title released in 2025 as a digital edition.
Written by David Brill and published in paperback in 2017, Into the Mist contains 13 self-standing narrative chapters, each distinct in its subject matter but unified by the book’s overarching themes of death, disaster, danger, and heroic rescue. Now in its sixth printing, the paperback edition of the book remains one of the best-selling titles in Smokies Life’s 72-year publishing history.
“This was a difficult book to write because it’s about human beings—fathers, mothers, children who suffered untimely deaths and left behind grieving relatives—but these also are stories about human beings locked in a desperate fight for survival,” said Brill, who is currently working on a second volume, Further Into the Mist. “It’s not reflective of a macabre interest in seeing how people suffer but instead learning how humans conduct themselves in extreme situations.”
Recent technology has impacted the visitor experience in the Smokies, and many of the stories in the book, occurring between 1931 and 2013, might have had different outcomes if the technology we have today had existed then. But perhaps the technological advancement most relevant to the e-book release of Into the Mist is the advent of Kindle and other digital reading devices. The e-book follows this year’s release of the digital edition of George Masa: A Life Reimagined, published in February 2025. The format of each e-book is responsive and flowable on a variety of devices.
“Hikers, particularly backpackers, are extremely conscious of the loads they impose on their bodies, and beyond the weight of the reading devices themselves, a digital file containing an e-book weighs nothing compared to a book,” said Brill. “Thus, hikers are now capable of hauling virtual libraries into the backcountry—which, one hopes, include Into the Mist—without increasing their burdens by a single ounce.”
The e-book version of Into the Mist can be downloaded from popular digital book platforms. Both the paperback and e-book versions include a comprehensive appendix of Great Smoky Mountains National Park deaths up to 2013, listing the leading causes of death and most dangerous places. Learn more at SmokiesLife.org/into-the-mist.
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The Great Smokies Welcome Center is located on U.S. 321 in Townsend, TN, 2 miles from the west entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Visitors can get information about things to see and do in and around the national park and shop from a wide selection of books, gifts, and other Smokies merchandise. Daily, weekly, and annual parking tags for the national park are also available.
