To the Gorge: Running, Grief, Resilience & 460 Miles on the Pacific Crest Trail

In this affecting debut memoir, athlete and essayist Halnon resolves to run across Oregon on the Pacific Crest Trail after her mother dies of cancer. Halnon’s mother, Andrea, lived out her later years as a “running, walking, biking billboard for physical fitness,” until she was diagnosed with a rare uterine cancer in her early 60s. At 66, she entered the final stages of the disease. Halnon decided to pay tribute to her mother’s tenacity by not only crossing the Beaver State on foot, but by doing it faster than anyone ever had. It was no small goal: at 460 miles, the distance nearly quintupled her longest continuous run, and the Pacific Northwest rains promised to be unforgiving. Despite the long odds, Halnon pulled it off, running the route in just over a week, beating all previously recorded paces. While pulse-pounding descriptions of Halnon’s athletic feats will be catnip for adrenaline junkies, what makes this sing is the author’s remarkably clear-eyed approach to loss: “I knew my attempts to outrun my own grief would be futile,” she writes. “I’d learned many times that... trying to avoid it is its own purgatory.” Halnon’s unflinching gaze elevates this above the crowded field of memoirs about losing a loved one. Agent: Stephanie Evans, Ayesha Pande Literary. (May)