Tiny Beautiful Things

Life can be hard: your lover cheats on you, you lose a family member, you can't pay the bills. But it can be pretty great, too: you've had the hottest sex of your life, you get that plum job, you muster the courage to write your novel. Every day across the world, people go through the full and glorious gamut of life - but sometimes, a little advice is needed.

For several years, thousands turned to Cheryl Strayed, a then-anonymous internet Agony Aunt. But unlike most Agony Aunts, this one's advice was spun from genuine compassion and informed by a wealth of personal experience - experience that was sometimes tragic and sometimes tender, often hilarious and often heartbreaking. Having successfully battled her own demons while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, Cheryl Strayed sat down to answer the letters of the frightened, the anxious, the confused; and with each gem-like correspondence - of which the best are collected in this volume - she proved to be the perfect guide for those who had got a little lost in life.

Strayed's worldview - her empathy, her nonjudgment, her belief in the fundamental logic of people's emotions and experiences despite occasional evidence to the contrary - begins to seep into readers' consciousness in such a way that they can apply her generosity of spirit to their own and, for a few hours at least, become better people... courageous and engaging stuff. - New York Times