The Wild Other: A memoir of love, adventure and how to be brave

Shortlisted for the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize 2017

It echoed far away, beyond me, but right inside me too, like a quiet, persistent noise in a distant room in my head. That panic switched itself on as soon as I opened my eyes in the morning and rang all day; an inner alarm that stopped me thinking, stopped me being, sometimes stopped me breathing. Several times a day I’d catch myself holding a breath for seconds at a time. I was very far away from everything close to me.

Clover Stroud's idyllic childhood in rural England was shattered when a horrific riding accident left her mother permanently brain-damaged.

Just sixteen, she embarked on a journey to find the sense of home that had been so savagely broken. Travelling from gypsy camps in Ireland, to the rodeos of west Texas and then to Russia's war-torn Caucasus, Clover eventually found her way back to England's lyrical Vale of the White Horse.

The Wild Other is a grippingly honest account of love, loss, family and the healing strength of nature. It is a book about one woman’s experience of the restorative powers of nature and an understanding of the wildness embedded inside herself.

Powerful and deeply emotional, this is the story of an extraordinary life lived at its fullest.

‘Stroud writes with considerable power, resonance and brutal honesty’ - The Sunday Express

‘A remarkable account of slow-motion grief, and the ragged, jagged fallout….penetrating and candid memoir’ - The Sunday Times

‘She has also transcended the trama of her past without forgetting its value - the ultimate goal of any meaningful memoir’ - Daily Telegraph

‘Stroud's astonishing memoir is a love letter of profound tenderness to her childhood’ - The Sunday Telegraph

'There is so much richly evoked life here...beautifully written.' - Cathy Rentzenbrink, The Times

'Beautifully written...I love this book.' - India Knight

'Compelling and candid, deftly weaving together past and present...a heart-wrenching story told in haunting, lyrical prose.' - Tatler

'An uplifting and achingly honest personal story about loss, trauma and grief.' - Woman & Home