All The Way To The Tigers

A new travel narrative examining healing, redemption, and what it means to be a solo woman on the road.

In the tradition of Wild by Cheryl Strayed and Inheritance by Dani Shapiro, Mary Morris turns a personal catastrophe into a rich, mulitlayered memoir full of personal growth, family history, and thrilling travel.

In February 2008 a casual afternoon of ice skating derailed the trip of a lifetime. Mary Morris was on the verge of a well-earned sabbatical, months of travel and adventure. But her itinerary turned into three months in a wheelchair, two surgeries, and months of rehabilitation. On Easter Sunday, when she was supposed to be in Morocco, Morris was instead lying on the sofa reading Death in Venice, casting her eyes over these words again and again: "He would go on a journey. Not that far. Not all the way to the tigers." Disaster shifted to possibility and Morris made a decision. When she was well enough to walk again (and her doctor wasn't sure she ever would), she would go "all the way to the tigers."

So begins a three-year odyssey that takes Morris to India in search of the world's most elusive apex predator. Her first lesson: don't look for a tiger because you won't find it--you look for signs of a tiger. And all unseen tigers, hiding in the bush, are referred to as "she." Morris connects deeply with these magnificent and highly endangered animals, and her weeks on tiger safari also afford a new understanding of herself.

Written in over a hundred short chapters accompanied by the author's photographs, this travel memoir offers an elegiac, wry, and wise look at a woman on the road and the glorious, elusive creature she seeks.