Tracks: A Woman’s Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback by Robyn Davidson, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Vintage Departures Series, 2014, originally published by Pantheon Books (1980), 288p.

At first pass, Tracks sounds like an Australian version of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild— but with camels: Young woman traverses wild lands in a bid for transformation and redemption.

Both Davidson and Strayed lost their mother. But while Strayed’s memories of loss accompany her on the trek through the Pacific Crest trail, Davidson provides little reflection on her past, her losses and the motivations for her decision to take a few bucks and parlay it into some camels and all the equipment needed to cross 1,700 miles of desert.

Davidson begins: “I arrived in the Alice at five a.m. with a dog, six dollars and a small suitcase full of inappropriate clothes. ‘Bring a cardigan for the evenings,’ the brochure said. A freezing wind whipped grit down the platform and I stood shivering, holding warm dog flesh, and wondering what foolishness had brought me to this eerie, empty train-station in the centre of nowhere. I turned against the wind, and saw the line of mountains ….”

After two years and about 125 pages, the trek begins. Those years and pages are not lost, and they do not delay adventure. The time in Alice Springs layers a history of genocidal colonization and exploitation against Australian aboriginals and introduces Davidson and the reader to the complexity of the camel and the misogyny that often raises its head when a woman ventures forth without a man.

Davidson wants to be alone, yet even in the1977 Australian Outback she’s often dodging tourists, wild camels, and even people she cares about. Davidson is judgmental and harsh as she considers others, and she is just as harsh on herself. The only person who consistently enchants her is Mr. Eddy, the aboriginal elder who must accompany her across sacred lands.

Strayed’s Wild is very internal and finds many resolutions. Davidson’s journey is more external and complex as she considers the Australian native people and the two centuries of murderous wrong done to them and the land that they inhabit. Davison does achieve some resolution in her self-imposed coming-of-age trial. Yet she mires herself and the reader in lamentations of ongoing environmental loss, racial and sexual exploitation, and the emptiness of superficial and fast journeys.  Davidson isn’t always likable, but she’s about as real as any memoirist can be on the page. The words feel honest and the journey the reader takes is evocative.  This travel memoir may not prompt a solo journey through the desert, but then if one reads this book, they discover that they really don’t have to rustle camels and trek through a desert. What is the thing that one must do? That is the question.

Amy Lou Jenkins is the award-winning author of Every Natural Fact: Five Seasons of Open-Air Parenting.  This review was first published in the Sierra Club’s Muir View. Contact her through her. AL at JackWalkerPress if you’d like to offer a book for possible review.