wild from lost to found on the pacific crest trail

After the diagnosis, she had put all of her effort into caring for her mother. 'Once my mother started dying, something inside of me was dead to 'Paul,' no matter what he did or said,' Cheryl confesses. Why did Cheryl Strayed and her first husband Marco divorce?įollowing her mother's diagnosis, Cheryl admits that her husband Marco ('Paul' in the movie and book) did everything he could to make her feel less alone. However, in real life, she put Glenn's contact information on the motel registration form before starting her trek in Mojave, not her ex-husband Marco's ('Paul' in the movie). Following her mother's death, Cheryl and Glenn did not remain close, partially because Glenn remarried. Glenn, whose name Cheryl changed to Eddie in her memoir, had been a father figure to Cheryl and her siblings when they were growing up (Cheryl's biological father, Ronald Nyland, had been abusive to her mother and Cheryl lost contact with him after they divorced). In real life, Cheryl's mother Bobbi was remarried to a man named Glenn at the time of her passing. This is perhaps the biggest change from the Wild true story.

Was Cheryl's mother Bobbi single at the time of her death? How long did Cheryl's mother survive after her diagnosis?Ĭheryl's mother, Bobbi Lambrecht, died seven weeks to the day following her lung cancer diagnosis. The school offered free classes to the parents of students. Her mother had gone back to school when Cheryl was a freshman at the University of St. Cheryl and her mother Bobbi were both seniors in college when her mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. 'Leif and Karen and I were inextricably bound as siblings, but we spoke and saw one another rarely, our lives profoundly different.' Cheryl states in her memoir that following her mother's death, she and her siblings grew distant from one another. EW.comĬheryl does have a brother named Leif, but she also has an older sister, Karen, who is absent from the movie. She meets the friendly hiker Greg, a female hiker, and a trio of young men whom she refers to as the 'Three Young Bucks.' In the book, she also encounters a community of people hiking the trail, and she walks with some of them for brief distances. Cutting and condensing events was somewhat inevitable due to the movie's two-hour running time.įor example, in the movie, Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon) has three significant encounters with people hiking the trail. Some of the events have also been reordered time-wise or combined.

The movie also cuts out a few other important people, namely Cheryl's older sister Karen and her stepfather Glenn (his name was changed to Eddie in the book). A noticeable difference is that Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon) makes less stops on her journey and doesn't encounter as many people as she does in the book. Screenwriter Nick Hornby stuck fairly close to Cheryl Strayed's memoir.

Wild from lost to found on the pacific crest trail