Published by HarperTrue, 2009, 336 pages

Rosie Swale Pope loses her beloved husband Clive to prostate cancer. In honor of his memory and to raise awareness about early cancer screening she decides to run around the world. The only way to stay on land most of the way is to do it in the Northern Hemisphere, with some of the most inhospitable places on this planet—Siberia, Alaska, and Iceland in winter. Her “little run”—which she started on her 57th birthday—took five years and 53 pairs of shoes. It is a story of endurance, courage, and sheer bloody-mindedness.

Other than a couple of unavoidable trips by boat and plane, she really does run every mile. If she has to leave the trail to go to the hospital, she makes sure she resumes where she left off. Her son starts a website about her run, which attracts a lot of well-wishers, several of whom help her, sometimes by donating equipment and sometimes by coming out to support her on the way. The people she meets give her an intimate glimpse into the countries she runs through—the culture as well as the resilience of ordinary people, often living in difficult situations, both economically and physically. 

One of the things that come through in her book is the generosity of complete strangers who invite her in, feed her, give her a place to stay the night, and sometimes drive miles out in blizzards to check on her and bring her food. Crossing the Latvian border a Russian border guard gives her 50 roubles to buy a bowl of soup from his mother’s café in the next village. 

As someone who loves animals, I was fascinated with her stories about wildlife. In Siberia, a pack of wolves keeps watching over her every night while she’s on their territory. A grass snake snuggles up in the folds of her sleeping bag and has to be persuaded to leave his new, comfortable home for the woods. In a blizzard in Greenland, she almost runs into “a nose and a pair of black eyes”— a polar bear. Fortunately, the bear ambles off.

Rosie’s run takes through Wales, England, Holland, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Russia, Alaska, Canada, northern United States, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroes, and Scotland. Those of you who read my reviews know that I like my travel books to have maps. But especially in this book, where Rosie not only runs through places unfamiliar to a lot of readers but also covers so much ground, I think a map would have been very helpful.

This review first appeared on Women on the Road.