Torch by Cheryl Strayed

Recently, my good friend gave me “Dear Sugar” an anthology of an advice column Cheryl anonymously wrote online for many years.  I confess I was surprised at her sledgehammer emotional responses to the queries.  I couldn’t read more then a few pages without crying so I thought I’d read her debut novel instead.  Why not, “Wild”? Because I have an allergic reaction to Oprah book picks, and I just wasn’t in the mood for it.  Now that I’ve finished Torch, I am the last person on the planet reading Wild and realized something.  Sometimes you have to write your fiction before you write your truth.

Torch is essentially a fictional rough draft of Cheryl’s autobiography.  The story focuses on a family in rural Minnesota whose matriarch is diagnosed with advanced cancer.  The family is fragmented by the mother’s abrupt exit from their lives.  Grief is messy and each family member deals with the loss in a uniquely dysfunctional way.  Bruce is the stepfather who can’t handle being alone.  Daughter Claire has left her senior year of college in the city, upon learning of her mother’s illness.  She now is trying to help her younger brother Joshua who has dropped out of high school and fallen into a criminal lifestyle.

Now knowing the Strayed’s true biography, it makes her fictional work that much more heartbreaking.  The grief is stark and relatable but ultimately each character bears the tragedy alone before they can forgive each other and move forward.  Loss is never truly healed but incorporated into the fabric of our hearts. I highly recommend this beautiful and poignant portrait of grief and healing.