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Walks Away Woman, a remarkable story of an ordinary woman
driven to an
extraordinary decision.
As she says, "It's because your gums are receding and
your hair is
thinning and your neckline is sagging. It's because all
you ever had
was your youth, and you spent that so long ago now it's
hard to remember
what you bought with it. Mrs. Warner shuddered in her
loosening skin,
was almost running now. It's because you're scared.
Lately you're so
scared and so aimless and so useless you sleep half the
day and panic
half the night. In between, you watch TV to ward off the
evil of
watching yourself. So—if not death, then what?"
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Overwhelmed, overwrought, and overweight, an everyday
housewife walks
into the Sonoran Desert to die. But,
there's more to a
desert than sand or death. There's thorns, venom, claws,
heat, thirst,
other people—and adventure.
"When she tripped over a rock—and in tripping, plunged
over the edge of
a cliff—Mrs. Warner had forgotten the desert, the cacti,
the heat, the
hunger, the thirst. All that was left was an ever
increasing panic and
an ever deepening desperation. And then there was the
shock of falling
and the screaming inside: Here we go, here we go—but
don't hurt, don't
hurt. Oh god, please! Don't hurt!
After that, there was nothing."
Until she woke up at the bottom of an arroyo with a lot
of surviving to
do. And all she had was her purse. It wasn't much to
face a desert
with, but Mrs. Warner, born Molly Brock, was in a fight
for her life,
the life she didn't want until she was just about to lose it.
What's an everyday housewife to do? In Molly's case, a
lot. And every
bit of it changing her from ordinary to extraordinary.
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