Synopses & Reviews
In the tradition of Wild and H Is for Hawk, an Outside magazine writer tells her story — of fathers and daughters, grief and renewal, adventure and obsession, and how running saved her life.
For more than a decade, Katie Arnold chased adventure around the world, reporting on extreme athletes who performed outlandish feats — walking high lines a thousand feet off the ground without a harness, or running 100 miles through the night. She wrote her stories by living them, until eventually life on the thin edge of risk began to seem normal. After she married, she and her husband vowed to raise their daughters to be adventurous, too, in the mountains and canyons of New Mexico. But when her father died of cancer, she was forced to confront her own mortality.
His death was cataclysmic, unleashing a perfect storm of grief and anxiety. She and her father, an enigmatic photographer for National Geographic, had always been kindred spirits. He introduced her to the outdoors and took her camping and on bicycle trips and down rivers, and taught her to find solace and grit in the natural world. And it was he who encouraged her to run her first race when she was seven years old.
Now nearly paralyzed by fear and terrified she was dying, too, she turned to the thing that had always made her feel most alive: running. Over the course of three tumultuous years, she ran alone through the wilderness, logging longer and longer distances, first a 50-kilometer ultramarathon, then 50 miles, and 100 kilometers. She ran to heal her grief, to outpace her worry that she wouldn’t live to raise her own daughters. She ran to find strength in her weakness. She ran to remember and to forget. She ran to live.
Ultrarunning tests the limits of human endurance over seemingly inhuman distances, and as she clocked miles across mesas and mountains, Katie learned to tolerate pain and discomfort, and face her fears of uncertainty, vulnerability, and even death itself. As she ran, she found herself peeling back the layers of her relationship with her father, discovering that much of what she thought she knew about him, and her own life, was wrong.
Running Home is a memoir about the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our world — the stories that hold us back, and the ones that set us free. Mesmerizing, transcendent, and deeply inspiring, it is a book for anyone who has been knocked over by life, or feels the pull of something bigger within themselves.
Review
“Katie Arnold has the heart of a runner. In Running Home, she plumbs the depths of her physical and mental abilities, discovering that strength, freedom, and peace are available to us when we step into the vast, quiet wilderness and follow our hearts into the most tender parts of life. She lives her truth authentically and without apology, proving that this is the only way to inner happiness. This book is for anyone who has longed to run from something to something, and who needs a jolt of inspiration from a benevolent seeker of both new terrain and the truth.” Tracy Ross, author of The Source of All Things
Review
“A beautiful work of searching remembrance and searing honesty…Katie Arnold is as gifted on the page as she is on the trail. Running Home will soon join such classics as Born to Run and Ultramarathon Man as quintessential reading of the genre.” Hampton Sides, author of On Desperate Ground and Ghost Soldiers
Review
“Arnold masterfully captures the vulnerability of wading through grief with each step she takes towards self-discovery. This remarkable memoir will undoubtedly resonate with runners but equally so with children of divorce, new mothers, and those who have suffered the loss of a parent. An eloquent tribute to the complexity and vibrancy of a parent-child relationship.” Booklist (starred review)
Review
“A contemplative, soul-searching account of the death of [Katie Arnold’s] beloved father and how she used long-distance running as a way to heal from the grief.” Kirkus Reviews
Review
“Katie Arnold is a gifted athlete and equally talented writer. In Running Home she speaks candidly about her relationship with her father and a family dynamic that verged on dysfunctional, yet was also empowering. Her story drew me in from the first line and I couldn’t stop turning the pages. A must-read for anyone looking for a deeper glimpse into the mindset of a fearless individual.” Dean Karnazes, ultramarathoner and author of Ultramarathon Man
About the Author
Katie Arnold is a contributing editor at Outside magazine. Her “Raising Rippers” column about bringing up adventurous, outdoor children appears on Outside online. She has written for The New York Times, Travel & Leisure, Sunset, Runner’s World, ESPN The Magazine, Elle, and many others, and her narrative nonfiction has been recognized in Best American Sports Writing. She is also a 2018 Leadville Trail 100 Run champion. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her husband and two daughters.