The Crossing

Solo woman, brutal long-distance trek, grief-driven self-reinvention. Both books turn physical endurance into emotional reckoning.

If you loved The Crossing and are searching for books like Sophie Matterson's solo Australian camel trek, Cheryl Strayed's Wild is the most direct companion read. Strayed hiked over a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail alone, grieving her mother and escaping a spiral of bad decisions. Like Matterson, she uses the punishing physicality of the journey — blisters, exhaustion, isolation — as the crucible for a deeper emotional transformation. Both women begin their walks carrying more internal weight than their packs, and both arrive somewhere unexpected by the end. Wild is a little rawer and more confessional in tone, but readers who responded to Matterson's candour about love and self-discovery will find an equally honest voice here. A natural next read for anyone asking 'what to read after The Crossing by Sophie Matterson.'

Female adventurer chases freedom through remote, physically demanding travel and wrestles with identity along the way.

Readers looking for books like The Crossing by Sophie Matterson will find a strong kindred spirit in Eva zu Beck's The Wilder Way. Zu Beck documents her compulsion to seek out the world's most remote and overlooked places, driven by a restlessness that mirrors Matterson's decision to walk 4,750 kilometres across Australia. Both women are frank about the personal questions that propel them into the wilderness — what they're running toward, what they're leaving behind — and both find that the journey reshapes their sense of self in ways they couldn't have predicted. The tone is similarly warm and self-deprecating rather than chest-thumping, making it a great fit for readers who appreciated that Matterson's adventure was as much inward as outward. A solid pick for anyone who liked The Crossing and wants more female-led adventure memoir.

Wilderness travel memoir driven by personal reinvention, with raw landscape writing and honest reflection on what the journey costs.

For readers who finished The Crossing by Sophie Matterson and immediately searched for 'what to read after a solo wilderness adventure memoir,' Far and Wild offers a compelling next step. Capuano and Huddleston recount an expedition into genuinely remote terrain, capturing the same tension between the beauty of wild landscapes and the grinding physical and emotional demands they place on the traveller. Like Matterson's thirteen months crossing Australia with her camels, the journey here is not a holiday but a reckoning — with nature, with each other, and with the kind of people they want to be. The memoir shares The Crossing's quality of honesty over polish, favouring candid reflection over adventure-magazine heroics. Readers who valued Matterson's grounded, personal voice will feel at home.

Extreme solo endurance journey through unforgiving terrain, with high physical stakes and genuine moments of life-or-death decision-making.

If what gripped you most about Sophie Matterson's The Crossing was the sheer physical audacity of the undertaking — the remote Australian desert, the unpredictable camels, the months of solitude — then Jean-Philippe Soulé's Dancing with Death will push that dial further. Soulé recounts a series of extreme travel expeditions where the margin for error is razor-thin, and the encounters with hostile environments feel genuinely life-threatening rather than merely uncomfortable. The tone is more intense and less introspective than Matterson's, but the underlying spirit is the same: a person choosing difficulty on purpose, and discovering something essential about themselves in the process. For readers searching for 'books like The Crossing with high physical stakes,' this delivers the wilderness intensity without the meditative pacing.

Solo female traveller navigates unfamiliar terrain across a vast continent, pairing vivid landscape writing with honest personal growth.

Readers who loved The Crossing for its combination of big landscape and intimate self-reflection will find a satisfying companion in Susanna Janssen's Once Upon a Continent. Janssen travels across South America alone, encountering the unexpected at every turn and allowing the journey to reshape her understanding of herself and the world. The scale of the undertaking echoes Matterson's 4,750-kilometre Australian crossing, and both authors write about foreign or unfamiliar terrain with the same mix of awe, apprehension, and dark humour. Where Matterson had five camels for company, Janssen navigates a continent of strangers — but both books share the quality of making a reader feel the miles in their bones. A great pick for anyone searching for 'if you liked The Crossing by Sophie Matterson, try...' solo female travel memoirs with emotional depth.