Wild
Cheryl Strayed · 2012
After her mother's death, the collapse of her marriage, and a heroin habit, Strayed walked 1,100 miles alone on the Pacific Crest Trail. The memoir is what saved her, and how. It became the defining American memoir of the 2010s about a woman walking herself back into a life.
The case against
Every rattlesnake, blister, and lost boot on the Pacific Crest Trail arrives pre-converted into a lesson about Strayed's grief, and the memoir explains its own epiphanies the moment they land, trusting you with nothing. The recklessness (wrong boots, no training, too much weight) gets retold as destiny. Self-forgiveness is the genre's job; here it is also the only setting.
Memoir · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
