The Observer

When I was a child, I thought I was going to grow up to be a writer,

and I really just thought I was going to grow up to be a writer, and I really just thought I was going

to have a book with a penguin on the spine of the book. But I never did write. I just,

life took me off down another avenue, and I never did write anything until I started to write

The Salt Path. The Salt Path was an accidental book.

It was never written with the intention of being read by anyone but moth.

This is the story Raina Wynne has told lots of times in interviews over the years.

She wrote the book for her husband, whose illness she feared would eventually rob him of his

memories of their walk. So a couple of years after that walk was over, she began chronicling

what happened along the way. I started to write it just for him, just so that I could create

a record of that time. So that when those memories really completely slipped away,

he'd be able to read it,

just a record of that magical time we'd spent.

And I printed it off on the home computer, on the printer.

And I just tied to the string and gave him it for his birthday.

And then my daughter read it before he did, you know, as kids do. And she said, you know, Mom, this isn't bad. You should do something with it. I said, what do you mean? Like, get a binder for it. She's no, idiot. Try and get it published. But how could I? You know, I'd never written anything.

The thing is, that's not true.

Raina Wynne had written a book before.

This investigation started with me trying to work out if Raina Wyn did what she claims she did in the Salt Path,

the true story of her life.

I've untangled contradictory timelines, public statements at odds with private ones,

...