Run for the Love of Life is a must-read for anyone who desires to escape the day-to-day sameness of our new pandemic-informed lives, or who seeks to feel alive, inspired, and filled with a renewed enthusiasm for the year ahead.

It recounts the extraordinary journey of South African Erica Terblanche, an ordinary woman who manages to not only achieve – but excel – on the world stage of extreme distance-running in some of the most inhospitable and majestic landscapes across the planet. Raw, honest and infinitely human, this part-memoir, part-travel novel thunders through one exotic race location after the other, as the runners battle the elements and each other across the vastness of the Sahara, Atacama and Namib Deserts, the great Grand Canyon, Turkish Cappadocia and the Kalahari Desert, to name only a few.

But more than just a book on racing, what makes this novel infinitely compelling and rewarding is that in the echoes of Erica’s story, one begins to sense the pulse of one’s own potential and long-forgotten dreams. While you may laugh, cry, and forget to take a breath at times, it is inevitable that Run will spur you on to find your own bliss, that which is buried deep within your soul and body.

At its heart, Run for the love of life is a story about love, forgiveness, perseverance and growth, and about the important things in life that ultimately makes us happy. Told with wit, humour and vulnerability, it is a book that will stay with the reader long after the final page is turned.