Title : Wild
Author : Cheryl Strayed
Narrators : Bernadette Dunne
Genre : Non-fiction
Publisher : Random House Audio
Listening Length : 13 hours 2 minutes
Rating : ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Narrator Rating : ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2

Cheryl loses her mother to cancer and the loss hits her hard. When she tries to keep her siblings together as a family, it doesn’t work and they drift apart. Their step-father has moved on with his life. Cheryl is married to a loving, supportive man, but is now on the brink of divorce. Her life, in short, is falling apart and she needs a fresh start. Then she sees a guidebook to hiking the PCT – Pacific Crest Trail, and decides to hike it. Wild is the story of Cheryl hiking the PCT and as she puts it – filling the hole in her heart.

This book was better than I’d anticipated. The author keeps things interesting by describing her challenges in great detail – how she is quite unprepared for such a rigourous and extended hike, her travails with Monster – her large and over-heavy backpack, and the toll the hike takes on her body – the blisters and peeling skin, flesh wounds and lost toenails. Although she hikes alone, Cheryl peppers her narrative with the many interesting characters she meets along the trail – fellow hikers, and also the people along the rest stops, where she stops to pick up supplies. For the most part, people are nice and helpful, and Cheryl is comforted by the new friendships and the kindness of strangers.

The author also very nicely intersperses her personal life story with the descriptions of the hike itself so it melded together to form one interesting story. She is brutally honest, even describing her proclivities outside her marriage and her experiments with heroin. I quite enjoyed the book and look forward to seeing the movie based upon it. The narrator Bernadette Dunne was marvellous, and it was a pleasure listening to the book! Highly recommended!