Another fascinating volume in this series that began in 1986.  Strayed, the author of Wild, has chosen mostly little known writers, many who are women reflecting on difficult childhoods and lives and reflecting Strayed’s own biography.

1. Poe Ballantine, Free Rent at the Totalitarian Hotel (down and out artist/rent collector in Eureka, CA)
2. Alice Munro, Night (childhood insomnia and fear in this autobiographical essay)
3. Richard Schmitt, Sometimes a Romantic Notion (running off to join the circus for this RI teen and writing fiction)
4. Vanessa Veselka, Highway of Lost Girls (history of a serial killer of ‘invisible girls’ by one who escaped)
5. Matthew Volmer, Keeper of the Flame (a Nazi museum in rural N. Carolina starts a young man thinking)
6. William Melvin Kelley, Breeds of America(an African-American reflects on prejudice in 1956 Harvard/Yale)
7. Mako Yoshikawa, My Father’s Women (a Japanese-American reflects on her father’s lovelife when he dies)
8. Walter Kirn, Confessions of an Ex-Mormon (Mormons intervene in important points in this writer’s life)
9. Kevin Sampsell,I’m Jumping off the Bridge(a bookstore clerk talks down a potential suicide and reflects on his own)
10. Eileen Pollack, Pigeons (elementary school psychologist, a childhood friend dies homeless)
11. Jon Kerstetter, Triage (a military surgeon describes an ‘expectant’ soldier and the impact on himself and others)
12. Marcia Aldrich, The Art of Being Born (a woman’s first birth brings back memories of her mother and her birth)
13. Charles Baxter, What Happens in Hell (a business trip to PaloAlto, a Pakistani limo driver, a nearly fatal accident)
14. Ander Monson, The Exhibit Will be So Marked (mix tapes for a 33^rd birthday, Michigan’s UP, Anatomy of a Murder)
15. Angela Morals, The Girls in My Town (young girls, pregnant, unmarried, no prospects in a small CA town)
16. Zadie Smith, Some Notes on Attunement (Joni Mitchell’s music, Seneca, and diverse connoisseurship)
17. Brian Doyle, His Last Game, (a dying brother and a pick-up basketball game)
18. Tod Goldberg, When They Let Them Bleed (the death of Duk Koo Kim in a boxing ring, the death of his mother)
19. Vicki Weiqi Yang, Field Notes on Hair (a high school student reflects on her brain cancer and chemo)
20. D. Daniels, Letter from Majorca (sailing with Israeli spies in the Mediterranean Sea)
21. John Jeremiah Sullivan, Ghost Estates (Ireland backpacking, broke, Synge, the Celtic Tiger declawed)
22. Megan Stielstra, Channel B (a new first time mother experiences depression and finds a friend)
23. Dagoberto Gilb, A Little Bit of Fun Before He Died (a Mexican/American writer and his weird friend Ripley)
24. Michelle Mirsky Epilogue: Deadkidistan (a mother reflects on the world after her young child dies of cancer)
25. David Searcy, El Camino Doloroso (Right off the Rails after running over a kitten with his baby, the truck)
26. Steven Harvey, The Book of Knowledge (a 60 year old finds his mother’s letters, a suicide when he was 12)

The unmitigated sadness of loss, either in childhood or of a child, reflects the editor’s own life experience but makes for a relatively overwhelmingly sad read, some very weird stories, and a desire to return to a more balanced essay collection for 2014.