I have made it my goal to read more 'inspirational or educational books' this year. My goal is at least one a month. Honestly, that's been pretty easy. I am averaging about 2 a month (on top of my normal reading of fiction books). I picked up a memoir the other day. While maybe not educational in a sense that I would learn something that would be useful for my personal health and fitness journey, this book was still inspirational and a very good read.
I am not ashamed to say that I picked up this memoir due to the fact that the mountain climber had been kidnapped and I wanted to read the gory details. However, I got a lot more than that in the book, A Light Through the Cracks by Beth Rodden.
The book does give the details of the kidnapping that occurred while she was on an international climbing trip. However, the story of that terrifying ordeal is interspersed throughout the book as the author relays what brought her to that point and how she struggled to survive and move on after the experience. This was a story of a young girl who followed her dream of being a climber and became a professional/sponsored climber. It is the story of a young woman who struggled for years to overcome the fears and trauma caused by the events that occurred during a seemingly simple overseas trip. The guilt caused her to pursue relationships that were not healthy. Her fear caused her to avoid people and situations. Almost every decision made after that momentous event was clouded with the past traumatic stress of the events.
Even more interesting to me, we are able to follow a professional mountain climber as she lives in a male dominated sport. We walk with her as she fears losing her sponsors and as she works to complete difficult climbs. Along the way, she explains different aspects of mountain climbing so that the without realizing it, the reader is becoming educated in the sport of mountain climbing.
I really enjoyed this book. It was not what expected in that it didn’t dwell on the actual events of the kidnapping. But it was a really good read. The story flowed and was informative and told in such a way that you couldn’t help but like the characters and hope for the best for them.
