An entertaining memoir. The feel of it reminded me a bit of Eat Pray Love in the woman-sorting-out-her-life-by-immersing-herself-in-a-new-experience type of thing. It took some serious balls for Cheryl Strayed to hike the PCT (alone, no less) and she's accomplished something that I could never do. I liked reading about the friends she met along the trail and the camaraderie of the PCT hikers, as well as her physical and mental/emotional transformation. 
 However. I am pro-life/anti-abortion/whatever you want to call it and I took issue with her choice to have an abortion when she found out she was pregnant by the heroin guy. It made one of her closing lines especially ironic: "It was my life - like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred." Well, sure, except for the inconvenient life of your unplanned pregnancy. Not quite irrevocable in that case, is it? This awkward juxtaposition made me cringe. (And no, of course I'm not saying she was in a position to raise a child at that point in her life, but that's what adoption is for. Spending nine months of your life pregnant in order not to kill somebody seems like a small sacrifice to make in comparison, don't you think?) 
 Anyway, I hope my views aren't offensive to anybody who's reading this. A decent book overall, and I liked all her discussion of the literature she read along her journey.