Description:
At the approach of his 50th birthday, sports and outdoors writer Geoffrey Norman decided to pursue a dream that had quietly obsessed him for years: to summit the 13,770-foot Grand Teton in Wyoming. Little did he suspect, when he announced his plans to his family, that his 15-year-old daughter, Brooke, would ask to make the climb too. Two for the Summit: My Daughter, the Mountains, and Me documents what happened when Norman realized that "the notion of the solitary climb to celebrate my fiftieth birthday was narcissistic, self-indulgent crap" and decided to attack the mountain with his daughter. It is the story of the two novices' toughest two climbs: Grand Teton, and (a few years later) 23,000-foot Aconcagua in the Andes, one of the seven tallest mountains in the world. Like most books in this genre, Two for the Summit is about adventure and taking risks, although in this case, Norman forgoes the usual adrenaline-and-disaster-driven narrative for a deeply personal and moving account of how climbing helped to teach him what it means to be a good father. There are moments (on Grand Teton for Brooke, on Aconcagua for Norman) when each reaches the limits of endurance, yet what moves this book along is the small epiphanies that accompany the hard work of building trust: "It occurred to me that if nothing else came from this climb and we never got close to the summit, this evening would be something I'd always be grateful for." --Svenja Soldovieri
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