The subtitle of this autobiographical account of one woman’s lone trek following the Pacific Crest Trail in California and Oregon is “A Journey from Lost to Found.” A habitual scoffer at sentimentality and neatly packaged memoirs which promise to both warm and rend your heart, it nearly put me off reading this book. I’m heartily glad it didn’t. Cheryl Strayed was twenty two when her mother was diagnosed with lung cancer and died, aged forty five. Her family rapidly drifted apart, her marriage ended and Strayed fell into a spiral of casual sex and heroin. A chance purchase of a hiking guide book proved inspirational – and with no experience of long-distance hiking, Strayed found herself setting out on an eleven hundred mile walk across the west coast of the USA, alone. Facing bears, landslides, rattlesnakes, empty water tanks in the Mojave Desert and bolting llamas, plus just the sheer intensity of walking miles each day across mountain ranges and through deserts, in snow, rain and...