Wild / Awards and Recognition". NPR Arts & Life > Books. Archived from the original on January 19, 2015 . Retrieved January 18, 2015. a b c Rehak, Melanie (March 3, 2012). "Trail of Tears". Slate. Archived from the original on March 3, 2012. Despite the Wagnerian tempests that led to the journey, a quiet dignity inhabits the heart of this book, as Strayed takes on the Mojave desert and the wind-twisted foxtail pines at the foot of Mount Washington. There are longueurs in the story and stylistic infelicities in the prose. But she lobs in lots of yeasty direct speech to keep the book, like the journey, on the road. I can't wait for the film. All this is probably for nothing,” she said once we’d hatched the plan. “Most likely I’ll flunk out anyway.” To prepare, she shadowed me during the last months of my senior year of high school, doing all the home- work that I was assigned, honing her skills. She replicated my worksheets, wrote the same papers I had to write, read every one of the books. I graded her work, using my teacher’s marks as a guide. I judged her a shaky student at best.

My mother died fast but not all of a sudden. A slow-burning fire when flames disappear to smoke and then smoke to air. She didn’t have time to get skinny. She was altered but still fleshy when she died, the body of a woman among the living. She had her hair too, brown and brittle and frayed from being in bed for weeks. Leahy, Anna (February 27, 2019). "The Enduring Appeal of Cancer Lit". Los Angeles Review of Books. Archived from the original on March 7, 2019. We were both seniors in college when we learned she had cancer. By then we weren’t at St. Thomas anymore. We’d both transferred to the University of Minnesota after that first year—she to the Duluth campus, I to the one in Minneapolis—and, much to our amusement, we shared a major. She was double majoring in women’s studies and history, I in women’s studies and English. At night, we’d talk for an hour on the phone. I was married by then, to a good man named Paul. I’d married him in the woods on our land, wearing a white satin and lace dress my mother had sewn. Leif didn’t come to visit her. Karen came once after I’d insisted she must. I was in heartbroken and enraged disbelief. “I don’t like seeing her this way,” my sister would offer weakly when we spoke, and then burst into tears. I couldn’t speak to my brother—where he was during those weeks was a mystery to Eddie and me. One friend told us he was stay- ing with a girl named Sue in St. Cloud. Another spotted him ice fishing on Sheriff Lake. I didn’t have time to do much about it, consumed as I was each day at my mother’s side, holding plastic pans for her to retch into, adjusting the impossible pillows again and again, hoisting her up and onto the potty chair the nurses had propped near her bed, cajoling her to eat a bite of food that she’d vomit up ten minutes later. Mostly, I watched her sleep, the hardest task of all, to see her in repose, her face still pinched with pain. Each time she moved, the IV tubes that dangled all around her swayed and my heart raced, afraid she’d disturb the nee- dles that attached the tubes to her swollen wrists and hands. best books of 2012 – nonfiction - 'Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail,' by Cheryl Strayed". CSMonitor.com. 2012-12-03 . Retrieved 2012-12-24. archive.a b c Shapiro, Dani (March 30, 2012). "The High Road / 'Wild,' a Hiking Memoir by Cheryl Strayed". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 13, 2014.

No one can write like Cheryl Strayed. Wild is one of the most unflinching and emotionally honest books I've read in a long time. It is about forgiveness and grief and bravery and hope. It is unforgettable.” May 30, 2012: Oprah Winfrey announced the launch of Oprah's Book Club 2.0 with Wild as its first selection. [3]a b c Shapiro, Dani (2012-03-30). "The High Road / Wild, a Hiking Memoir by Cheryl Strayed". The New York Times . Retrieved 2012-12-24. archive. But this was not enough. I wanted those words to knit together in my mother’s mind and for them to be delivered, fresh, to me.