Laurel Braitman grew up in nearby Santa Paula and attended Thacher School before embarking on a circuitous and peripatetic career that led her to the faculty at Stanford School of Medicine where she is the Director of Writing and Storytelling. She just published her memoir, "What Looks Like Bravery," about her family and journey through grief, loss, growth and love. She previously wrote the New York Times best-seller "Animal Madness."

Braitman's father, a prominent cardiac surgeon in Ventura County, was diagnosed with cancer when Laurel was three, and he endured brutal treatments one after another with the purpose of teaching her and her brother everything they needed to know about life. When he died, Braitman blamed herself for not being able to heal him herself, and lived in denial for years, leading to one misadventure after another, especially in the partner department. 

"Bravery" takes us along on her road to redemption, with stops along the Umpqua River in Oregon, the Aleutian Islands, Lake Como in Italy, the high desert of New Mexico and the Bay Area. With lots of familiar Ojai references. She faced one tragic loss after another, trying to find meaning amid the devastation. 

The book will inevitably be compared to Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love" and Cheryl Strayed's "Wild," but it holds a more poignant and hopeful tone and ends with a twist that sums up the hard-earned wisdom found along the way.

We talked about Ojai in the good old days, steelhead fishing, growing up country and how death haunts us all. We did not talk about Jimmy Piersall's battle with depression, the collected sketches of Monty Python's Flying Circus or Darwin's finch collection at the British Museum & Library.

Look for her book tour - she will be giving a reading on Saturday, March 18th at the Deer Lodge from 3 to 6 p.m.