Strayed named herself after her divorce after the definition of "strayed," and the choice is apt as she walks the Pacific Crest Trail from California to Oregon and shares with the reader her physically brutal experiences on the trail itself and the emotionally brutal experiences that led to her walking it. Her words are vulnerable and honest; she is an amazing storyteller and she has an absolutely heart wrecking story to tell. Her own distance from the story (it took place in 1995) lent gravity and hindsight to the story which kept it from being a grieving diary entry and turned it into a book that shows that even the most disastrous, foolish, and ill-prepared among us can pick ourselves up and find a way back onto the trail.