But in "Wild," the two tales Strayed tells, of her difficult past and challenging present, are delivered in perfect balance.
"One of the most important lessons I learned through the success of Wild is that it was such an affirmation," Strayed tells Oprah during her "SuperSoul Sunday" interview.
Cheryl Strayed tells NPR about how her long-lost half-sister found her by reading Strayed's memoir, "Wild".
Loosely based on the Heide school of painters, Bitto's The Strays tells the story of childhood friends Lily and Eva, one born to ordinary struggling parents, the other to a modernist painter and his wealthy "old money" wife.
He was recently caught by a stray microphone telling factory workers in Chicago that the Republicans are "the most crooked, you know, lying group I've ever seen".
To avoid being enticed to stray, they apparently told themselves she wasn't all that hot anyway.
[He] seemed evasive when he was asked how he was disposing of the strays: he told the [local] paper that he had given some of the cats to "a person in New Jersey who takes care of animals".
When a letter writer wondered what Strayed would tell her 20-something self if she could talk to her now, she responded: "Stop worrying about whether you're fat.
Ignoring clear signs of a rapprochement between the Tories and the SNP, he strayed close to politely telling the Scots off, bemoaning "the stain of separatism seeping through the union flag".
"As long as I am never told not to stray beyond the halfway line, then I'll be happy.
