Book Review: Wild

When Cheryl Strayed decided to make up a new last name, she chose one that would reflect the waywardness of her life. At the time, Strayed was lost in a sea of despair. Her marriage had fallen apart, she'd aborted a baby conceived with her heroin-addicted boyfriend, and she'd dabbled in the drug herself. All fallout, all choices made while trying to salve the deep wounds left by her beloved mother's sudden death and her family's subsequent unraveling. In 1995, Cheryl Strayed had strayed. She was alone; she was a stray, desperate to find a home.

Knowing she needed a change—something to jar her out of her figurative dangerous path—Strayed chose a literal one. A path she hoped would help her "find herself" and heal those wounds. The path she chose was a 1,100 mile trek through the grueling and beautiful Pacific Crest Trail.

What she learned during her largely solitary trek from Mojave, California, to Cascade Locks, Oregon; through deserts, mountains, and snow; with blistered and bleeding feet, parched throat and empty stomach, Strayed recounts in Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.

Strayed's story is beautifully told. Her razor-sharp writing packs punches and tosses laughs, grips readers so that we lumber along paths and wander through woods and crave her beloved Snapple lemonade right along with her. The book is a testament to the human spirit.

Talk About It: Whether or not our personal experiences resemble Strayed's, certainly most of us can relate to the heart of her story. Although we might not choose to spend 100 days backpacking through the rugged wilderness, most of us have spent plenty of time in some kind of wilderness nevertheless. Most of us know what it is to feel , as though we're lost and don't belong. And most have had times when we felt something had to give or we might fall apart completely.

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