The husband slid an envelope across the table to me, and the wife said, 'Look! Open it up.' Inside, there were photographs of me with them on the trail in 1995, and instantly I knew exactly who these people were. They looked vaguely familiar, but I was in Portland, and it's a small-town kind of place. When I sat down to sign books, they were the first in line. The Trail Buddies She Never Expected to See AgainĪt the first reading I ever gave for the book, an elderly couple showed up. So I took it out, which was so, so, so painful.Ģ. But I couldn't get the scene to work within the trajectory of the story. The two of us were like those kittens, lost in the innards of the building. We saved them, but just finding them was symbolic in a lot of ways, about who we were and what was happening in our marriage at the time. They'd obviously been lost in the innards of the building for weeks. Sitting inside the walls were these two emaciated kittens completely covered in soot and grease. So we took a hammer and clawed away until we'd removed all the plaster and Sheetrock. It was New Year's Day, and we heard this strange yowling coming from the ceiling of our bedroom closet. One of my favorite scenes was about my ex-husband and I living in Brooklyn. The Scene from the Book That She Hated to Cut but Had To So we sat down with Cheryl Strayed to talk about all the juicy bits that aren't in the book, from the joyful and the surprising to the bittersweet.ġ. Published by Vintage.This story of adventure, loss and personal growth is one of those books that readers can't get enough of-literally. It would only seem like that rough star, its every bright line shooting out.įrom Wild by Cheryl Strayed ©2012. Or how I'd struggled to save my marriage, even while I was dooming it with my lies. It wouldn't show you how in the months after my mother died, I attempted - and failed - to fill in for her in an effort to keep my family together. The map would illuminate all the places I ran to, but not all the ways I tried to stay.

To New Mexico and Arizona and Nevada and California and Oregon and back. If I had to draw a map of those four-plus years to illustrate the time between the day of my mother's death and the day I began my hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, the map would be a confusion of lines in all directions, like a crackling Fourth of July sparkler with Minnesota at its inevitable center.

Wild novel cheryl strayed