Author Presentation: Megan Griswold

Megan Griswold
The Book of Help: A Memoir in Remedies

This memoir documents the fascinating, funny, and sometimes bizarre strategies one woman uses in her lifelong quest to find herself, find inner peace and healing. She logs 15,000 hours journeying through different remedies, from New Age/alternative to the odd and extreme.

The Book of Help traces one woman’s life-long quest for love, connection, and peace of mind. A heartbreakingly vulnerable and tragically funny memoir-in-remedies, Megan Griswold’s narrative spans four decades and six continents –– from the glaciers of Patagonia and the psycho-tropics of Brazil, to academia, the Ivy League, and the study of Eastern medicine. Megan was born into a family who enthusiastically embraced the offerings of New Age California culture –– at seven she asked Santa for her first mantra and by twelve she was taking weekend workshops on personal growth. But later, when her newly-wedded husband calls in the middle of the night to say he’s landed in jail, Megan must accept that her many certificates, degrees and licenses had not been the finish line she’d once imagined them to be, but instead the preliminary training for what would prove to be the wildest, most growth-insisting journey of her life.

Megan Griswold went to Barnard College, received an MA from Yale, and went on to earn a licentiate degree from the Institute of Taoist Education and Acupuncture. She has trained and received certifications as a doula, shiatsu practitioner, yoga instructor, personal trainer, and in wilderness medicine, among others. She has worked as a mountain instructor, a Classical Five Element acupuncturist, a freelance reporter, an NPR All Things Considered commentator and an off-the grid interior designer. She resides (mostly) in a yurt in Kelly, Wyoming.

“In a world full of spiritual seekers, Megan Griswold is an undisputed All-Star. She has spent her life examining her existence in patient, courageous, and microscopic detail, and now she has written about her search with tender and comic honesty. What a delightful journey!”
–Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Magic and Eat, Pray, Love

“The Book of Help is a bright, self-effacing, celebratory, gut-wrenching and hilarious chronicle of one woman’s attempt to heal both herself and the parts of the world she intersects. It reminds us, in these dizzyingly corrupted times, of the redemption to be found in good friends, good dogs, and good therapy, and urges us to make the world we want to live in. This book is an all-night sleepover ouija board/tarot card/magic eight ball session of delight.
–Pam Houston, author of Deep Creek