Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Century
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and she would do it alone.
Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Century
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and she would do it alone.
Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
BUY THE BOOK
These clubs recently read this book...
Community Reviews
What Bookclubbers are saying about this book
✨ Summarized by Bookclubs AI
Readers say *Wild* is a powerful, poetic memoir of grief, resilience, and self-discovery during Cheryl Strayed’s daunting 1,100-mile Pacific Crest Tra...
What can I say about this book that everybody hasn't already said? I don't understand the negativity towards the book or the author. This young woman not only lost her mother, but then her stepfather disappeared -- this after being abandoned long before then by her biological father. She was experiencing grief and trauma, and she was very honest about the shitty way she handled it, and this journey was her way of getting herself clean, of "finding herself." We are all on our own journey. It's reading stories like this that help us understand a different perspective. Or not, apparently.
(Don't even get me started on comparisons to Eat, Pray, Love....)
(Don't even get me started on comparisons to Eat, Pray, Love....)
A journey of discovery
Cheryl made the journey of a lifetime. I can't even imagine enduring the pain of an 1100 mile backpacking trip. I loved the descriptions of scenery I will never see. Nd the stories of her encounters with other hikers. The first part of the story is tough to read. The loss of her mother sent her into a spiral that only the trail helped her survive it.
Cheryl made the journey of a lifetime. I can't even imagine enduring the pain of an 1100 mile backpacking trip. I loved the descriptions of scenery I will never see. Nd the stories of her encounters with other hikers. The first part of the story is tough to read. The loss of her mother sent her into a spiral that only the trail helped her survive it.
I had forgotten this was an Oprah book (don't usually like those) but it was really good. I found myself reading passages aloud to my husband about Cheryl's hiking adventures. (We are day hikers only. OK, I am a day hiker. He has hiked/backpacked a lot but not on the PCT) Anyway, I really admired Cheryl's strength and determination to hike alone on the PCT for 100 days. Was she a bit naive? Yes. Did she make poor choices in her life and marriage? Yes. Was she inadequately prepared for this type of trip? Yes. That's what made her so appealing. She was flawed, like all of us. She was just doing her best trying to get through a crappy time in her life. I know comparisons have been made to Eat, Love Pray and even Into The Wild but I think her story is different from those. Yes, she is seeking to find herself but she doesn't have unlimited wealth to travel all over the world to do that (like EPL). Heck, many times, she had less than $2. Remember, she was unprepared! And unlike the young man in Into The Wild, she survives her journey and is able to write about it. Which brings me to the writing...I thought it was great! I felt like she was telling me this story and I could picture it all as it happened, especially when she lost her boot over the mountain. Unprepared, again! I think about people who just take off to go find themselves, rediscover or whatever....and I have come to 2 conclusions. They are either older and can financially afford to have such an adventure (ELP) or they are young (like Cheryl and Into The Wild guy), broke already (or close to it),no spouse, no kids, no responsibilities.
I enjoyed the writing style tremendously, it was a fast and easy read and I appreciated the author's brutal honesty, to the point where at times, I wished she had not just shared that with me...BUT I had difficulties sympathizing with the author, for her lack of maturity and discernement. There is such a distinct disconnect between the writing style and the author's behavior in the book that I even wondered at times if she was writing about a fictional character.
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.