Summary

The prologue is titled “Cheetah.” The author, Glennon Doyle, describes visiting a zoo with her wife and two daughters. They went to where the cheetah was kept, and watched a demonstration of how the cheetah, who had been named Tabitha, was trained. Doyle describes herself as thinking about how the cheetah had been trapped and trained into a routine that had left her “unaware that if she remembered her wildness – just for a moment – she could tear those zookeepers to shreds” (xv). After the demonstration, the zookeeper revealed that the cheetah had been born in captivity, and had no sense of what life in the wild was like. As she continued, the author’s daughter Tish pointed to the cheetah, who seemed to be stalking the edge of her enclosure. She had, Doyle’s daughter said, gone wild again. Doyle, who uses...