by Cheryl Strayed
This memoir is about a young woman whose family has fallen apart with the death of her mother and whose marriage collapsed partly as a result of her grief at the death of her mother.
She and her brother and sister were raised by their single mother who left her abusive husband when the children were quite young. Then, in her mid forties, in a relationsihip with a loving man and a man her children like, she discovers she has breast cancer. She dies a few months later.
The author, Cheryl is angry at her father who was abusive and then not in her life. She is angry at her mother for dying when Cheryl is only 22. Her sister and brother can't face the pending death of their mother but Cheryl is a devoted caregiver for her mother along with the mother's boyfriend. After her mother's death the family seems to disintegrate, everyone goes their own way. Cheryl starts having affairs, doing drugs including heroin. She is lost and troubled and her marriage falls apart.
While she is a store she notices a copy of a book about the Pacific Crest Trail in the west coast of the U.S.
She thumbs through it and later goes back to purchase a copy. She and her husband decide to divorce. On the divorce papers she is given the opportunity to give herself a new name. Rather than keep her maiden name, she decides on a new last name "Strayed". She thinks that is an appropriate name for herself.
She decides to hike 1100 miles of the trail which actually runs from the Mexico border to Canada. She has never hiked in her life, she does no preparation in terms of training to condition her body. She does have the good sense to organize boxes with clean clothes, food, and money which a friend mails to her at stops along the way.
She buys basic supplies and loads them into her pack, including books to read. People are amazed at how huge and heavy her pack is, half her weight. One of the hiker's helps her to lighten her load mid-way along the trail. The pack feels so ":light" she wants to jump.
The book is the story of her experiences along the route. She is very weak at first and wants to give up but keeps on. Throughout the trip she is tormented by blistering and sore feet, partly because the boots she got are too small. At one point she accidentally loses one of the boots, in frustation she tosses the other away. She walks for several days with duct taped feet until she gets to a point where a replacement (correct size) pair of boots awaits her.
The trip is tough, exhausting and dangerous but she makes it. She has encounters with wildlife including snakes, bears and deer. She has some terrifying times when she is out of water or out of money. A lot of the time she is very hungery but it seems that people come through for her when she needs help. Some of her fellow trekkers nickname her the Queen of the PCT because so many people offer her assistance along her way.
She is alone most of the time along the hike, and she enjoys that. But she meets and does share some time with groups of hikers. She enjoys her time with them but likes ot get back to her solo path.
As she struggles along the path, she also struggles with her sadness and anger. She completes her planned walk. By the end of the walk she has come to terms with her father's absence and her mother's death.
It was an interesting book, you never knew what would happen. It was told with honesty and great detail in terms of the geography. Fortunately nothing really bad befell her.
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