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    The Source of All Things: A Memoir
    The Source of All Things: A Memoir
    The Source of All Things: A Memoir
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Source of All Things: A Memoir

    Written by Tracy Ross

    Narrated by Tracy Ross

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Called “brave and heartbreaking” by Elle and “an extraordinary journey” by People, Tracy Ross’s riveting memoir about abuse, survival, and healing is now available in paperback.

    Tracy Ross’s adult life has been defined by her determination to push herself to the physical limits of what a person can endure. In The Source of All Things, she struggles to reconcile her stepfather’s abuse with her desire to make her family whole again.

    Tracy’s stepfather first molested her when she was eight years old. But he was also her family’s savior—the man who rescued her mother from deep depression and the protective figure who instilled in her the very passion for nature that saved her life. It wasn’t until she ran away from home at fourteen that her family was forced to confront the abuse that tore them apart. 

    The Source of All Things is a powerful, breathtakingly honest story about a mistake that has taken three decades and thousands of miles of raw wilderness to reconcile. Unfolding in the achingly gorgeous landscapes of Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Alaska, Tracy describes her search for a place in which to heal, the sacredness of the outdoors, and the ways in which nature, at its most wild and challenging, gave her the strength to overcome.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateMar 8, 2011
    ISBN9781442341111
    Author

    Tracy Ross

    Tracy Ross is an award-winning journalist and contributing editor at Backpacker Magazine, an ASME award–winning outdoor publication with 1.2 million readers. She has been published in the U.S., England, South Africa, and Australia. Her essay “The Source of All Things” has won the National Magazine Award in 2009 and has been selected for inclusion in The Best American Sports Writing and The Best American Magazine Writing. Her Skiing magazine story “Our Country Comes Skiing in Peace” received a notable mention in Best American Travel Writing, and her work has also appeared in Outside and Women’s Sports Illustrated.  Ross’s assignments have taken her to the wilds of Alaska, the ski slopes of Iran, and the most remote reaches of Ecuador. She writes about exotic places and intriguing people, but mainly about the wilderness and how it intersects with the most important issues in our lives. She lives with her family at 8,000 feet in the mountains above Boulder, Colorado.

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    Reviews for The Source of All Things

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Tracy Ross has written a powerful memoir that will resound with many, assuredly staying with the reader. Her story is open, honest and painfully true.Losing her father when she was a very young child, Tracy felt blessed in gaining a doting stepfather not long thereafter. They become very close throughout her childhood, and all seemed right in her world. Her family was close; camping trips were commonplace. Her stepfather taught Tracy many things about the Idaho nature, wildlife, and living life to the fullest on these family outings. However, his love and affection for Tracy turned very wrong when on a camping trip her stepfather began to sexually abuse her. Tracy was eight years old.Eventually, Tracy fights back. Leaving home as a teen, she reveals the truth. This tears the family apart, finally forcing them all to face buried secrets and carefully hidden flaws. As Tracy was betrayed as a child, the family felt she now betrayed them. It takes years for them all to admit the truth.Growing up fast, Tracy goes through many changes, and encounters many situations. She learns hard-earned lessons. Tracy's lifelong love for nature and the outdoors takes her from her native Idaho to Alaska, and eventually to Colorado. It was nature that always held Tracy together, and ultimately helped her to heal.There finally comes a point where Tracy is able to confront her stepfather, as an adult. This takes immense courage, for which I admire her. In doing so, Tracy is able to come to terms with what happened to her, and that she survived.Tracy Ross's story is full of raw emotion, vulnerability, and ultimately real survival and forgiveness. This is a memoir not to be missed.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Forgiveness is often the hardest thing to do, yet it is also one of the most liberating things. Forgiving the man who sexually abused you is almost unheard of. Tracy Ross has written a heart-wrenching story that takes us into the darkest part of her life. Through her eyes we are shown her life, her pain and her survival. Her first outdoor experiences with her step-father are the experiences she retreats to as she begins to explore and try to understand the situation. The outdoors is her safe haven. This is a recommended read for anyone and everyone concerned with the abuses that go on around them.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I received this book for free through Shelf Awareness and was so eager to start reading it. As much as I love fiction, I also love reading true stories because there's no better way to be able to connect with characters than when you know they actually exist. Tracey Ross appears to have a good life when she was very small, living with her loving mom and older brother. Her dad died on a hiking trip when she was a baby, so she doesn't have any memories of him and no father figure in her life. Then one day her mom meets a guy named Donnie and suddenly she felt like she hit the jackpot. He's everything any kid could ask for in a dad and he dotes on her like she is his own, like she's his favorite person in the world. This fragile existence carries on for a while, until one fateful camping trip when something happens that young Tracey can't explain. She knows someone touched her inappropriately and assumes, like her mom does, that someone must have broken into their camper in the middle of the night. It further confuses her when her step-father takes her aside and explains that he was simply "tucking her in". From then on things get worse and the abuse becomes more frequent and obvious. This man who was once her champion, who was her favorite person and she felt safe with now became her own personal bogey man. After years of enduring this and her mom refusing to believe her daughter's claims, she finally runs away to escape. This book follows Tracey as she finally escapes the man she once loved as a father, attempts to move on with her life, and eventually seek to get the one thing that has eluded her all of these years: her step-father's confession.My thoughts: This book was heartbreaking. No child should ever have to go through this, they are innocent and look to their parents to protect them from all of the evils of the world. But what can they do when the worst evil of all is living with them? I can't imagine everything that Tracey went through and to say she had a rough time getting her life back on track would be an understatement. It's very easy to see that nature held an escape for her from all of her feelings. The wilderness was a place she knew well and held very dear to her heart; it made her feel whole again. If she hadn't had something that she felt so strongly about, who knows where she might have ended up? I was so angry at her mother, the fact that Tracey told her that Donnie was molesting her and she just refused to hear it. As if her young daughter would make up a story so horrifying. She really didn't even listen to her at all; and even after Tracey ran away she still was adamant that Donnie was innocent. It would be almost impossible to get over that; to go from having two parents who you love and you think love you, to not having anyone. I would never turn my back on my child, I don't know any mother that could. It just astounds me. Tracey is extremely courageous, both in telling this story for the whole world to hear and for finally confronting her father about the molestation. She's really been able to turn her life around and that is truly remarkable. I really enjoyed reading this, even as I was horrified by some of the events I could not put it down. It made me laugh at times, pulled at my heartstrings, and made me cheer for this woman who was able to overcome unbelievable emotional pain and not let her abuser destroy her life.My rating: 4/5 stars

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Memoir by a woman who was molested by her stepfather starting when she was 8 into her teen years. She recounted that time period and her life afterwards, what it did to her and her family and how she attempted to find peace for herself and forgive him.It was difficult to read because you don't want to even think that anyone can do that to a child. It really messed her up and it made me sad. Definitely a worthwhile read and I was cheering her on.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Aside from this Advance Readers Copy being absolutely riddled with errors (on more than one occasion, entire phrases and paragraph segments are repeated a page or so later, on top of regular spelling and grammar errors), Ross is not really that competent of a writer for this admittedly compelling material. She skirts a lot of issues, and attaches a lot of blame (and there is a lot of it to go around), but she never seems to come to grips with herself (and connect with us as readers).
    • 3/5
      Tracy Ross, as a young child, dearly loved her stepfather, more a real father to her than her biological father who died when she was an infant. Until, that is, he started sexually abusing her. She continued to love him, but her love was mixed with hate and confusion. And this conflict colored the rest of her life.This memoir is heartfelt and touching, and I am so sorry that Ms. Ross experienced what she did. The abuse never went to the level of rape in the technical sense, but this story proves that it doesn't have to be that violent in order to be devastating.The story starts with the adult author going on a wilderness backpacking trip with her stepfather, just the two of them, to the same place the abuse started, an attempt at understanding the past and at getting some closure. And then she tells how it all began.The story is also about conflicts and contradictions. As a child, Tracy ?was a sucker for any four-legged creature? but happily went hunting with her stepfather, killing and helping gut one of the animals that she is a sucker for. I just don't get that. She also sent out mixed messages to her stepdad, which I understand is pretty common for children in this situation. She wants the abuse to stop but she also wants his love and attention. What I had more trouble understanding are the bad decisions she continued to make as an adult. And she made some really bad decisions.For someone who writes ?It states in my personal rule book that I never, ever discuss anything having to do with my period, ovulation, or contraception, and I remember wishing that everyone associated with my pregnancy had been given a copy so that they could to the same,? there was way too much information about childbirth. As an adult, she continued to carry her victim mentality.As wrong as her stepfather was, I just couldn't understand her mother. She continued to put her daughter in compromising situations, such as demanding that her daughter model a new swimsuit for the stepdad, knowing that there had been abuse and knowing that her daughter was uncomfortable with doing it. Seeming to value the stepdad over the daughter. What kind of mother does things like that? Again, I just don't get that.While the story is an important one and it was certainly brave of the author to tell it, I do have some problems with it. The copy I read was an advance reader's edition so mistakes are to be expected and the quotes may be changed, but even for an ARE, it was in serious need of editing. Typos can be easily fixed, but there were places where the same sentences were repeated a paragraph or two later, and this didn't seem to be for effect. Or if it was, it wasn't successful. Also, during much of the middle of the book, I felt like I was being beat over the head about the abuse. I know about the abuse. To me, it took away from the story to explain everything with writing again that she had been abused. Sometimes, less is more.I enjoyed the Alaska stories, her treks in the mountains. I didn't like the parts about the dog mushers because that is a personal sore spot of mine. I know, first-hand as well as second, of too many abuses in the ?sport,? and I just can't condone it.So...overall, this is a touching, honest, and brave book, but the writing was a bit too uneven for me to love it.Thank you to the publisher for giving me a copy of the book for review.