In 1986, at the age of 17, Strayed graduated from McGregor High School in McGregor, Minnesota, where she was a track and cross country runner, cheerleader, and homecoming queen. In 1987, during the summer after her freshman year of college, Strayed worked as a newspaper reporter for her hometown county weekly, the "Aitkin Independent Age" in Aitkin, Minnesota. She loosely based the fictional Coltrap County in her novel "Torch" on McGregor and Aitkin County. Strayed attended her freshman year of college at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, but by her sophomore year, she transferred to the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree, graduating magna cum laude with a double major in English and Women's Studies. In March 1991, when Strayed was a senior in college, her mother, Bobbi Lambrecht, died suddenly of lung cancer at the age of 45. Strayed has described this loss as her "genesis story". She has written about her mother's death and her grief in each of her books and several of her essays.