Fiction Book Club Meets at Westfield Memorial Library to Discuss “Wild”

The following is a press release from the Westfield Memorial Library:

On Tuesday, September 18 at 7 p.m., the Fiction Book Club meets at the Westfield Memorial Library to discuss “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed. The library is located at 550 East Broad Street.

Although this book is not fiction, it is an exceptionally good read and a powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.

In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and to do it alone.

She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than “an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise.” But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone. Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and loneliness of the trail.

Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.   

For a copy of the book, please call Jen Schulze at 908.789.4090 x 7951 or email jschulze@wmlnj.org.

The Book Club is free and open to Westfield Memorial Library and MURAL cardholders. (MURAL cardholders belong to libraries that are part of the Middlesex Union Reciprocal Agreement Libraries. Check our website to see if your library participates.) To register for the program, visit the library’s website at www.wmlnj.org , click on the Online Calendar, or call 908.789.4090 option 0.

Founded in 1879, the Westfield Memorial Library—the community’s destination for discovery and ideas—engages minds, entertains spirits and facilitates lifelong learning for people of all ages. Hours are 9:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., Monday through Thursday; 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Friday and Saturday; and closed on Sunday until September 23.

For more information call 908.789.4090, visit the library’s website at www.wmlnj.org , and sign up for the monthly e-newsletter “Library Loop,” or stop by the library at 550 East Broad Street for a copy of the award-winning quarterly newsletter “Take Note.”