Cheryl Lehman Collier

At 22, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State - and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than “an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise.” But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone.

1937: The world on the brink of war. But in the city of Riverburgh, NY, 40 miles north of Manhattan, there was a different kind of war brewing. A war against the gangsters and thugs who ruled the streets and against the corrupt politicians who turned a blind eye to the evil that ran rampant. In a city where everyone had given up hope and cried to the heavens for a savior, a savior had arrived. But was he heaven-sent or a monster from hell? A grim, skull-faced being who glowed with a terrible brightness.