A MOUNTAIN TOO FAR: A Father's Search for Meaning in the Climbing Death of His Son

Any parent will find it hard to read former newspaper reporter Purnell's detailed account of a two-year quest to understand his 28-year-old son Chris's sudden death. Chris, an obsessive climber, died in Canada in an ice-climbing accident. At first racked by anger, Purnell becomes "obsessed with finding out just who Chris was, to know his secrets and why he chose to climb." Developing his own climbing skills, the 65-year-old author visits some of his son's favorite regions, climbing in Yosemite, the French Alps and then finally the Himalayas, where, twice trying to scale mountains that Chris also attempted to climb, he achieves a sort of closure. The first part of Purnell's narrative is somewhat stiff, as he apparently tries to separate the story from his clearly overwhelming emotions. However, in the second half, Purnell includes Chris's own journal entries about life and climbing. As he begins to understand Chris's life of "fervor and commitment," Purnell gains some painful insight: that serious climbers usually have "a childhood filled with family trauma"—in Chris's case, his parents' acrimonious divorce—and that perhaps he is "wrong in refusing to accept Chris's absence." Purnell ultimately decides that perhaps his "need to climb a mountain to know [his] son was misplaced," but he achieves something else: he pays tribute to Chris's energy and to the pain that a child's death can cause a parent, without descending into maudlin bathos. (Apr.)Forecast:Any parent grieving the loss of a child might be drawn to this clear-minded, loving and unsentimental book. Additionally, given the current popularity of (often dangerous) outdoor sports, Purnell's attempts to make sense of their psychological meaning could help generate word of mouth.