I love Raynor Winn’s 2018 memoir The Salt Path. I’ve taught it a couple of times, and my students have loved it, too. It tells a story about how going on a long walk–the 630-mile South West Coast Path, to be precise–saved Winn and her husband, Moth, from twin disasters: the loss of their home and Moth’s diagnosis of corticobasal degeneration, a fatal and incurable brain disease. It’s a wonderful book, full of luminous prose and a deep sense of connection to other people and the land. I can’t recommend it too highly.

The Wild Silence is Winn’s 2020 sequel to The Salt Path. It’s a different kind of memoir. While The Salt Path is focused on one experience (their walk takes two summers, but it’s still a single story), The Wild Silence recounts multiple events. As it begins, Moth is pursuing a university degree. His health is failing as the corticobasal degeneration slowly destroys his brain. Winn herself is stuck, going through an almost agoraphobic distaste for leaving their apartment or talking to other people, unable to find work, lost. A return home to sit with her dying mother only adds to her guilt and confusion. And her worry: she can see that Moth is getting worse, that without the daily walking that seemed to arrest the progress of his disease, he isn’t going to last. But of course that kind of walking is not possible for a full-time student. It’s hardly possible for anyone; making a living takes up most of our time, and frills, like going on long walks, are an unreachable privilege for all but a few. What to do?

Winn does a couple of things. One is writing The Salt Path as a gift to her husband, who is starting to forget the details of their experience on the South West Coast Path as the CBD progresses. The account of writing that memoir here makes it seem a little too easy, like one of montages in a film where some creative process–a band getting together, learning to play their instruments (hello, The Commitments)–is just too quick and painless. But what do I know? Maybe that’s how The Salt Path came about, without struggle, without any opened veins or bleeding, the difficulty Hemingway described as built into the writing process. Another is deciding to make friends. The social isolation she experiences at the start of the book is almost as toxic as Moth’s CBD, and when she starts to address it, she begins to heal.

When Moth and their two children read the manuscript, they urge Winn to find a publisher. Its appearance in print leads to new opportunities: rewilding a farm where the land has been abused, a long autumn hike with friends from the South West Coast Path across volcanoes in Iceland. Working outside, walking outside, is confirmed to be the best treatment for Moth’s illness. And we see indications that The Salt Path is becoming a success as The Wild Silence comes to an end. That’s no surprise; The Salt Path has sold more than a million copies. It was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize and the Costa Book Awards, and it also won the first RSL Christopher Bland Prize; a feature film version starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs is coming out this spring. Of course, all of that’s still in the future as The Wild Silence concludes, but the hopeful signs are there.

The Wild Silence has been another big success, ending up on bestseller lists and being shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize, too, just like its predecessor. My advice: read The Salt Path first. If, after you’ve finished, you’re curious about what happens next, as you will almost certainly be, read The Wild Silence. There’s a third book, Landlines, which I’m planning to read this year, and a fourth is apparently going to appear this coming autumn, although the title has yet to be revealed. I love The Salt Path, and I like The Wild Silence; it’s not quite the achievement Winn’s debut is, but it’s still worthy of attention.