Palmetto Publishing Releases Betsy Cooksey's New Memoir About a Horseback Expedition Across Mongolia

Written with collaborator Andrea Cagan and featuring a foreword by Marianne Williamson, the newly published memoir follows a sixty-five-year-old woman through multiple trips to Mongolia over seven years.

CHARLESTON, S.C., Nov. 4, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Palmetto Publishing has released Lost and Found in Mongolia, a memoir by Betsy Cooksey written with bestselling collaborator Andrea Cagan. The book, subtitled One Woman's Journey into the Wilderness, carries a foreword by Marianne Williamson and is now available to readers. It recounts multiple charitable horseback expeditions over seven years and the personal reckoning that accompanied them.

The memoir opens on a farm at the end of a dirt road. Cooksey was sixty-five, divorced after nearly thirty years of marriage, living alone and managing Crohn's disease. By her own account, she had given up. Then came an invitation of five words: "You're welcome to join us." The invitation led to a charitable horseback expedition across the Mongolian wilderness, the beginning of multiple trips to Mongolia over seven years. She was, as she describes it, wildly unprepared for that first journey. She could barely ride a horse. She could not pitch a tent.

The book tracks what happens when a woman with no relevant skills and a body in revolt embarks on journeys to Mongolia over seven years. Illness, exhaustion and terrain she cannot control press on her daily. The harder challenge is interior. Cooksey writes about the armor she had spent decades assembling, about anger and hopelessness, and about the unfamiliar work of asking strangers for help. The expedition's charitable purpose places the needs of others in front of her own.

Betsy Cooksey stated, "The answer is on the other side of the pain."

The memoir enters a category that has drawn steady readership since Cheryl Strayed's Wild and Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, though Cooksey's narrator is considerably older than the women at the center of those books. Publishers and booksellers have noted growing demand for midlife and later-life reinvention narratives, and for travel writing set well outside standard tourist routes. Cooksey's account is aimed at adult readers of memoir, adventure writing and books on recovery after divorce or chronic illness. The register is conversational, by turns comic and candid.

Cooksey is an international philanthropic athlete. Her collaborator, Andrea Cagan, has worked on numerous bestselling memoirs. Palmetto Publishing lists the title under Biography and Autobiography, Memoirs.

Lost and Found in Mongolia is available for purchase online at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. For more information about the author, please visit any of their social media platforms.
Facebook: Betsy Cooksey - Author
Instagram: @betsycookseyauthor 

About the Author: Betsy Cooksey is an international philanthropic athlete whose life was transformed through multiple trips to Mongolia over seven years, including a charitable horseback expedition through its wilderness. Her memoir, Lost and Found in Mongolia: One Woman's Journey into the Wilderness, written with bestselling collaborator Andrea Cagan, blends adventure, humor, and emotional honesty to share a story of healing through service and the courage to begin again. Follow Betsy Cooksey and Andrea Cagan for updates on new releases.

About the Book:

Title: Lost and Found in Mongolia
Author: Betsy Cooksey

Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
Publication date: October 20,2026
ISBN-13: 9798318847752, 9798318858840, 9798318860560
Available for interviews: Author, Betsy Cooksey

SOURCE Palmetto Publishing