One year after losing her husband of many years to a sudden brain bleed, Rachael Lundin did something that made perfect sense to no one but her: she packed a floor-length gala gown, four books, and one amazing sleeping bag, and flew to Mongolia to ride 700 kilometers across the Gobi Desert on horseback.

She wasn't running away. She was trying to find out if she was still there. Mongolian Love Letters is the true story of the Gobi Gallop — the longest annual charity ride on the planet — told by a woman who arrived exhausted, grieving, and uncertain she had any business being there. Riding alongside strangers through trackless steppes, moonless nights, broken stirrups, and soul-crushing trots that went on long past the point of endurance, Rachael discovers what grief looks like when it has nowhere to hide. What it means to be terrified and keep going anyway. And what happens when the only way out is through it.

This is also a love story. Written as letters to Charlie — the man who sorted firewood by what smelled best, who spelled her name "Ratchel" for years, who always knew what was needed before she thought to ask — Mongolian Love Letters is a portrait of an ordinary, extraordinary marriage and the impossible task of living fully in its absence. It is funny and raw and honest about the mud before it gets to the stars.

For readers of Wild and The Year of Magical Thinking, this is a memoir about what survives loss — not just love, but the self. The woman who rode into Mongolia on horseback was not the woman who rode out. Somewhere between the gopher holes and the moonless nights, the broken stirrups and a borrowed Western saddle, she found her way back.

Mongolian Love Letters is for anyone who has ever stood at the edge of an impossible thing and wondered if they were brave enough. For anyone who has loved someone and lost them. For anyone who needs proof that it is possible — not just to survive — but to ride.