Steph Jagger had always been a force of nature. She grew up emulating the men in her life?chasing success, climbing the corporate ladder, playing by the rules of a masculine ideal?and by all accounts, she was living ?the Dream.? But it wasn't her dream.

While skiing with friends one day, the universe caught her attention with a sign: Raise Restraining Device. The words suddenly became a personal call to shake off the life she had built and start a search for something different?something more.

Steph decided to walk away from the success and security she had worked hard to obtain. She took a second mortgage on her house, sold everything except her ski equipment and her laptop, and bought a bundle of plane tickets. For the next year, she followed winter up and down the mountains of North and South America, Asia, Europe, and New Zealand on a mission to ski four million vertical feet in a year.

What hiking was for Cheryl Strayed, skiing became for Steph: a crucible in which to crack open her life and get to the very center of herself. Through this journey of body and soul, she came to understand how to be a woman, how to love, and how to live authentically.