The journey toward healing starts with a single brave step--but it is never walked alone

Mel Ellis knows that her eating disorder is ruining her life. Everyone tells her rehab is her best option, but she can't bring herself to go. Broke, broken, and empty in more ways than one, Mel launches one last-ditch effort to make hers a story worth telling. She will walk her own road to recovery along the lesser-known trails of the North American wilderness.

Though she is physically and mentally unprepared to face the difficulties that lay ahead, she sets off on foot from Michigan. Her goal? Mount Rainier National Park in Washington State. During the long journey, she meets strangers with their own stories, as well as ghosts from her past who can no longer be ignored. But though the land she travels threatens her success at every turn, it's her own dark thoughts she'll have to overcome in order to find peace in the life and the body she has been given.


"Brave and compelling. Mel's journey toward revelation and hope is an invitation for us to see ourselves as God sees us and to discover--or rediscover--why our stories matter."--Sharon Garlough Brown, author of Shades of Light and the Sensible Shoes series

"With humor and compassion, intricate insights, and singular descriptions, Autumn Lytle has captured the pain of encroaching mental illness. May there be many more healing stories from this truly gifted author."--Jane Kirkpatrick, bestselling author of The Healing of Natalie Curtis