Vanishing Acts by Cynthia Zarin, from Estate, is featured in the October issue of Harper’s Magazine:
When did I become interested in disappearance? In November 1961, Michael Rockefeller, the son of the then governor of New York, age twenty-three, vanished in New Guinea when his catamaran capsized and he drowned while trying to swim to shore. Or did he drown? His body was never found. How could that be? A story lurking in the mind’s eye, a helicopter rotor over the river. He was a boy who loved beautiful things, and he had found them there, living among the Asmat people. Some of these were dugout canoes, made of nutmeg wood; others, called bis poles, were intricately carved, made of trees that were stripped of their bark and turned upside down so the carved roots delicately scraped the air.
Read more at Harper’s Magazine.