A book found in missing Whitman-Hanson student Maura Murray’s car doesn’t mean what police and media reports are saying it means, said Fred Murray this week.

Murray is exasperated with recent media and police reports linking the book “Not Without Peril” by Nichols Howe to a suicidal tendency.

“The state police seized on the fact that this book was in her car as part of their suicide argument,” Murray said.

Maura Murray, a 21-year-old UMass nursing student and Whitman-Hanson graduate, disappeared after abandoning her car on a rural New Hampshire road in February of 2004.  She has not been seen since, and nothing is known about what might have happened to her.

Murray said he bought the book from the author directly, when he, Maura and his son Fred were hiking around Mount Washington in New Hampshire.  Hiking, particularly in that area, was a bonding activity for Murray and his children.

On that day, the group had just finished hiking Tuckerman’s Ravine, one of the more famous climbs on Mt. Washington, and headed back to the base lodge where they met Howe, signing copies of his book.  The book features Mount Washington and the various trails around it –– Boot Spur, Lion’s Head, the Great Gulf, etc. –– quite prominently.  After talking with the author for a while, Murray bought the book.

“It’s a book about Mount Washington,” he said.  “Almost like a map … It meant the same thing to all of us because we had all been there.”

Murray said the book was passed from family member to family member, as a shared experience.  It just happened to be Maura’s turn to read it when she disappeared.

There are sections of the book which deal with climbers frozen to death or otherwise killed on the slopes of Washington, which is known as having some of the worst weather in the world and can be quite dangerous in the winter months.

During the search for Maura, Fred Murray says the police erroneously latched on to the book’s more morbid themes as proof that Maura was suicidal.  Murray says this couldn’t be further from the truth.

“It’s a book about a struggle for life.”