Wild

At twenty-six, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. After her mother's swift death from cancer, her family fell apart, and her marriage crumbled. With nothing to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: she wanted to hike alone one thousand one hundred miles along the West Coast of America - from the Mojave Desert, through California and Oregon, to Washington. She had no experience in long-distance hiking, and the journey was nothing more than a line on a map. Yet she promised something - the promise to piece together a life that lay in ruins at her feet. Strayed's account captures the agony - both mental and physical - of her incredible journey; how it drove her mad and frightened her, and how it ultimately healed her. "Wild" is a brutal memoir about survival, grief, and redemption: a haunting portrait of life at its lowest and highest points.