Wild by Nature

I was born with two legs, so I decided to use them.

So recounts Sarah Marquis, who invites us to ride shotgun and experience her epic 10,000 mile odyssey through the eyes of a solo traveler in her debut memoir, WILD BY NATURE (Thomas Dunne Books; February 2016).

Marquis adventures through Siberia and into Mongolia, China and Laos, and eventually Thailand, where she boards a cargo ship to Australia in order to take on the final continent in her journey.

A veritable legend in the hiking realm, Marquis shares the unique perspective that lends to her position as one of the most knowledgeable female hikers alive today. While likened to the famed explorers of past, she has experienced a world beyond Robert Falcon Scott and his peers. Antagonized by drunk Mongolian horsemen, robbed of her Blackberry by a gang of Chinese children, a victim of either malaria or dengue fever (she wasn’t sure which one), and self-defender against drug traffickers brandishing machine guns in Laos, Marquis stood her ground as a only a true adventurer can. But of all her trials and tribulations, she says, it is humans—not nature—that consistently prove the most challenging.

With WILD BY NATURE, Marquis has authored a riveting, nearly unbelievable memoir—it’s Wild meets Eat, Pray, Love…on steroids.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A National Geographic 2014 Adventurer of the Year, Sarah Marquis has been profiled in The New York Times Magazine and National Geographic. Her past solo expeditions have included hikes along the Pacific Crest Trail, as well as across both Australia and South America.