A Walk in the Woods
Bill Bryson
Another underprepared hiker tackling a great American trail, this time the Appalachian. Lighter and funnier than Wild, but with the same blisters, doubts and love of wild places.
12 books to read next
Books Like Wild
If you loved Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Readers love Wild for its raw honesty: a grieving, self-destructive young woman takes on the Pacific Crest Trail with no experience, an absurdly heavy pack and boots that don't fit. The pleasure is in the mix of physical hardship and emotional reckoning, told with humour and without self-pity. It's a memoir about grief for a mother, about failure and recklessness, and about how walking day after day slowly makes room for healing. If that's what drew you in, these books share its spirit.
More long walks and trails
Tracks
Robyn Davidson
A young woman crosses 1,700 miles of Australian desert with camels, largely alone. Like Strayed, Davidson is blunt, stubborn and searching, and the landscape reshapes her.
The Salt Path
Raynor Winn
After losing their home and facing a terminal diagnosis, a couple walks England's South West Coast Path. Readers who loved Wild's walking-as-survival will find it deeply moving.
Grief and finding your way
H Is for Hawk
Helen Macdonald
After her father's death, Macdonald trains a goshawk and retreats into the wild. Like Wild, it turns grief into a physical, all-consuming challenge, written with fierce honesty.
The Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion
A precise, unflinching account of the year after Didion's husband died. For readers who connected with Strayed's grief for her mother, this is the classic of the form.
Crying in H Mart
Michelle Zauner
Zauner writes about losing her mother young and the messy self that follows. It shares Wild's raw mother-daughter heart and its mix of tenderness and humour.
Fearless women alone in nature
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Annie Dillard
A woman's solitary year of close attention to the natural world. Quieter than Wild, but for readers moved by Strayed's moments of awe on the trail, it is essential.
Into the Wild
Jon Krakauer
The story of a young man who walked away from everything into the Alaskan wilderness. It explores the same pull toward risk and solitude that drove Strayed onto the PCT.
Educated
Tara Westover
A woman breaks from a damaging family and rebuilds herself through sheer will. Readers who admired Strayed's self-reinvention will find a similar hard-won transformation here.
Blazingly honest memoirs
Tiny beautiful things
Cheryl Strayed
Strayed's advice columns as Dear Sugar, full of stories from her own life. The same warmth and candour as Wild, offered to strangers navigating their own catastrophes.
The Glass Castle
Jeannette Walls
A chaotic, unconventional upbringing told without bitterness. Like Wild, it is honest about family damage yet full of love, and it reads with a novel's momentum.
Lit
Mary Karr
Karr's memoir of addiction, motherhood and recovery is as frank about self-destruction as Wild is about Strayed's heroin and affairs, and just as darkly funny.
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