Ever since the book So Long as It’s Wild: Standing Strong After My Famous Walk Across America (2023)by Barbara Jenkins was announced, I’ve been highly anticipating reading it. A few years ago, I read (and loved) To Shake the Sleeping Self, written by one of her sons, Jedidiah Jenkins. From following both Jedidiah and Barbara for a while on Instagram, I’ve stayed in-the-know about book releases for both authors and have enjoyed watching the marketing process of this title play out.
Barbara is clearly a no-nonsense strong Southern woman who is full of stories, loves her people fiercely and doesn’t take life too seriously. Obviously, I do not know her personally from following along on social media, but I was so looking forward to reading more about her life in So Long as It’s Wild and was thrilled to receive a copy for Christmas. Perhaps because my expectations were high (and that I had just read a book that I really loved), I was a bit disappointed when I found that So Long as It’s Wild did not quite meet my expectations.
Written very much after the facts, this book details the author’s hillbilly childhood in Poplar Bluff, Arkansas; her personal experiences on her 3,000-mile trek across the United States with her brand-new husband, Peter; and the years after that famous walk during which she grappled with the unexpected fame, fortune and heartbreak as she navigated parenthood and its own set of trials.
Each chapter shifted in time, which wasn’t a deal breaker, but in this case, I felt that it chopped up the narrative. Many chapters felt like individual essays rather than plot devices. I also found the style of writing to be brusque and repetitive (there were two chapters that were so strangely similar, as if the editor forgot to take one of them out). Memoirs can be very sensationalized—and I was grateful this one wasn’t—but neither did I find it to be particularly captivating.
Throughout her life, Barbara clearly went through some very tough seasons, made more difficult by consistent verbal abuse and abandonment. In describing less-than-ideal situations, she doesn’t wallow in self-pity, but almost always comes up with reasonable justification for why people treated her poorly. An arc of growth isn’t really found until the last few chapters of wrapping things up. Perhaps that is true of the book of our lives—some junk takes decades worth of little “chapters” to sort through for a hard-won resolution to come about. I guess I just really wanted Barbara to see the good in herself sooner.
Admittedly, I have not read either of the other books that Barbara and her former husband, Peter, wrote about their hike across America. So, I don’t know how to compare So Long as It’s Wild in terms of how it does or doesn’t fill in the gaps of what was left unsaid in the other stories. To be clear, I’m not not recommending this book. There was plenty to be enjoyed in Barbara’s storytelling and my interest in traveling to witness the rugged beauty of the American West was definitely piqued. It’s just always a bummer when something doesn’t quite meet your expectations—regardless of whether they were founded or not.
This book may be for you if you also like: The Walk West (or other titles by Barbara Jenkins); National Geographic; hiking; walking across the country; the kindness of strangers; stories of resiliency; TBook Review: To Shake the Sleeping Selfo Shake the Sleeping Self (book by Jedidiah Jenkins); the late 1970s; nature; parenthood; Nashville, New Orleans; ranching; mountains; deserts; plains; antelope; Wild (book by Cheryl Strayed); Into the Wild (book by Jon Krakauer); culture of the American South; memoirs; travel diaries; U.S. National Parks; faith.
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https://bookshop.org/a/109412/9781947297715
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SDG
L.M.Beatty 