| Summary, etc.: |
"In the tradition of Cheryl Strayed's Wild comes ... the story of a young climber's struggle to make her own way in the mountains and in life. As a fourteen-year-old tomboy languishing in small-town Ontario in an alcohol-afflicted family, Jan is thirsting for adventure and freedom. After climbing a hundred-foot rock face, alone and without any equipment, she decides she will be a mountain climber when she grows up. Though it's a highly improbable goal, by twenty she's a cocky, nomadic, tobacco-chewing climber with a magnetic attraction to the wrong men and misadventures. She gradually develops as a climber, with the intention of becoming one of a few female mountain guides. After a series of doomed romances, Jan falls in love with an affable, hardcore Banff climber, Dan. Dreaming of a life together, maybe even kids, she enrolls in university with plans to become a teacher. But her world falls apart when Dan is killed in an avalanche. Two days after Dan's memorial, she grieves in the arms of another extreme alpinist, Grant. Not long after, she discovers she's pregnant. Terrified of being alone, she accepts a grudging offer of marriage and abandons her education and climbing. In spite of paralyzing unhappiness, they buy a house in the mountains, have a second baby, and slip into their parents' rigid roles: Grant, the provider, working in the bush as a logger; Jan, the housewife and mother. While she clings to her dream of university and autonomy, he pursues his dream of scaling mountains--dreams that pit them against each other. As her marriage unravels, Jan realizes she has to transform herself into the kind of person who can seize her dream, just like she transformed herself into a climber. It takes years and many small acts of courage, but finally, her need to grow surpasses her need to feel safe. She packs up her young children and drives off to the city, for perhaps the biggest adventure of her life: university and single motherhood. Combining driving narrative and sardonic humour with white-knuckled descriptions of life and death in the mountains, Jan Redford is paving the way for a new breed of memoir writers. She shows the immense determination required to follow your dream, even when your world is crumbling around you, and the bravery it takes to lead, not follow--in the mountains and in life."-- Read More |
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