At just 14 years old, Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped from her Salt Lake City home at knife point and held captive for nine months. In “Detours,” her third book, she offers an honest look at healing, faith and the lessons learned when life veers far from the plan.
Smart says the idea for the book came to her after a near-missed flight when a rockslide closed Parleys Canyon to the airport. She took a major detour through East Canyon to make the flight.
“When writing this book, I tried to come up with kind of the key elements that really made a difference in my own healing, and I kind of placed them as rest stops one might have along their journey,” Smart said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour,” Tuesday. “And I just felt like the analogy between like driving along a road or going along a path just fit really well with this idea of our healing journey.”
Smart says no path is ever straightforward and grieving the life that might have been is an essential part of moving forward.
“One of the first rest stops that I talk about in my book is to grieve the lost paths,” she said. “I mean, we all have these visions. I know I certainly did, where you think, your life is just going to go a certain way, and then it can be really devastating when you realize that that is a path you can no longer follow, that you have to figure out a new way. And it's very easy to get stuck at that point and just feel like there is no moving past it. The first step is to understand that it's OK to grieve what you've lost, the life that you thought you were planning on having, and that's OK to be sad and upset and mourn that loss.”
While writing the book, Smart says she relied on an assistant to help organize her thoughts.
“I don't journal,” she said. “During my captivity, I was forced to journal, and then I felt like it was used against me in the trial, and so I have hated journaling ever since then. I did absolutely have someone help me along the way, because I did not study writing in school. Honestly, I never thought I would write any books in my life. I'm so grateful for that, because otherwise it would probably be a discombobulated mess of ideas.”
Through her experiences, Smart says she hopes “Detours” will help others navigate their own journeys and not give up.
The book is available at local booksellers and online. So far, no local book signings have been announced.
