Love Over Everything. “The Salt Path” Hit Bestseller 80 Weeks In A Row

If you loved “WILD” by Cheryl Strayed, read this book

What do you do if you just lost your home, your money, your business and your income — and your husband has just been diagnosed with a terminal illness?

Well, if you’re Raynor Winn — you go for a 673 mile walk.

‘The most inspirational book of this year’ — The Times

The beginning made me sick…

Just sick. Angry at the world. Angry at the court system, and judges, lawyers and power trips. Angry at people who once called themselves a friend but stuck it to you so bad no one needs enemies like that, much less friends.

The book opens with Raynor Winn trying to defend herself and her husband in court because they couldn’t afford a lawyer.

A fifty-something woman trying to save everything her and her husband worked their entire lives for.

For decades, she and her husband had lived off the little piece of land they owned. The home they’d spent their lives paying for until it was theirs.

It’s where they raised their kids, farming veggies and raising sheep. Raised them up and sent them off to college and adult lives.

It wasn’t much, but it was glorious — and it was theirs.

I won’t tell you what their friend did to them. How he “thanked” them for their vote of confidence.

I’ll let you read that part.

I won’t tell you what the judge did, either. It was deplorable. That judge should not be a judge. My opinion, of course.

How do you reject the one crucial piece of evidence that would save the life’s work of an older couple and call yourself a fair and impartial judge?

How do you send fifty somethings, one dying, into the street when a piece of paper could have changed everything — and still look in the mirror?

I don’t know. But, I’ll let you read that, too.

Here’s what I will tell you. It ended with them hiding in their house to have one last moment before they were sent into the streets with nothing. Absolutely nothing. No income. No home. No nothing.

Just each other.

“An astonishing narrative of two people dragging themselves from the depths of despair along some of the most dramatic landscapes in the country, looking for a solution to their problems and ultimately finding themselves.” — Independent (UK)

Homeless at fifty…

So there they were. Homeless in their fifties. Not just homeless, but they’d lost their income, too. Their home was how they earned their income. So when they lost their home, they lost everything. Literally.

And if that’s not already bad enough, right before the verdict, Raynor and her husband went to the doctor because of some strange symptoms that were happening to her husband.

He was diagnosed with a terminal illness.

He probably only had months, the doctor said. Months.

Go home. Rest. Settle your affairs. Don’t do anything strenuous, the doctor said. And avoid stress. Stress will speed up the progress of the disease.

How do you avoid stress when you’ve just lost everything?

‘A beautiful, thoughtful, lyrical story of homelessness, human strength and endurance’ — Guardian

The reviews blew my mind…

Most reviews were glowing. I’ll start there. 88% of the reviews were 4 and 5 star reviews. Over 60% were five stars.

It’s rare for a memoir to have a 5.5 star rating. I mean honestly, most people’s lives just aren’t that interesting. But this one does. Well deserved, in my opinion. The critical reviews from press, media and Kirkus were over the top glowing and heaping praise on the book.

But the people who didn’t rate it 4 or 5 stars…?

Hoo boy. They SOME mad.

Those people are everything that’s wrong with the world.

Know what they said?

They said it’s shameful. How irresponsible. What they “should have” done is busted their asses. Been “more responsible” and gone out to get jobs immediately, any jobs they can get. They bitched about “glorifying” homelessness, as if that’s what they were doing.

I promise you, it’s not.

Thank heavens most people got it. Because glorifying homelessness is not what they were doing at all.

It was not a drop out odyssey…

There’s a lot of people who want to just opt out these days. Just sick of the treadmill and the inequities of life that never end until people just want out.

That’s not what this is.

It’s the story of an old couple, one dying, that lost everything. And they had two choices. Live in the streets among the homeless, or figure something out, fast. So they spent what little money they had left to buy the cheapest camping gear they could buy.

And they set out to hike a 673 mile trail.

Because — if you’re hiking a trail where everyone sleeps in a tent on the ground, are you really homeless? Or are you just another distance hiker?

It gave them normalcy. Time to think. Time to heal.

There’s one scene where Raynor is watching her husband. He’s standing in his ratty underpants holding their entire tent above his head and telling her to run as the water approaches. The entire tent. With bedding still unrolled inside because they’d been sleeping.

He couldn’t have done that when they started. Not physically.

Heart racing, she realizes he isn’t in decline anymore. He’s healthier than he’s ever been since they lost their home. He’s getting stronger, not weaker.

That’s when they begin to wonder if maybe there’s hope.

Maybe the doctor was wrong.

Maybe he won’t die just yet.

For almost an entire year, they dropped out of life and walked that path, sleeping under the stars and walking until they dropped into their sleeping rolls exhausted every night.

But it was never about dropping out. In the long run, it was about taking the time to heal their battered spirits before rebuilding their lives again.

Very much like WILD, the book Cheryl Strayed wrote after walking the Pacific Coast Trail after getting a divorce and losing her mother in one fell swoop. Except she wasn’t over fifty. Raynor and her husband were.

I won’t tell you how it ends, either. No spoilers.

All I will say is there’s a sequel. I can hardly wait for it to arrive. I hope it’s half as good as the first book. I don’t know if it will be, or even can be. The bar is pretty high. I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did.

“In some ways The Salt Path reads like the ultimate drop-out odyssey, except that this journey isn’t a life choice . . . What the book chiefly conveys is the human capacity for endurance and the regenerative power of nature . . . ” — The Times (UK)