I don’t climb mountains. I don’t scale rock faces. And frankly, I have no intention of starting.

So when I picked up Crux, by Gabriel Tallent, a novel about two teenage rock climbers, I wasn’t entirely sure it was going to be for me.

I was wrong.

Dan and Tamma are seventeen, living in the California desert, and they’re obsessed with rock climbing. They come from complicated families, neither has much money, and the future is looking pretty uncertain.

But when they’re climbing, something changes. Up on those rocks, they’re making their own decisions. They’re testing themselves. They’re discovering what they’re capable of.

And they’re also confronting some pretty terrifying choices about their futures.

There’s a wonderful metaphor at the heart of this book. In climbing, the crux is the most difficult move on a route. The place where you have to figure out how to get from where you are to where you want to be.

And isn’t that a pretty good description of life?

Dan and Tamma are at that age when everyone has an opinion about what they should do next. Their parents have expectations. Their circumstances impose limitations. And their dreams don’t necessarily fit the lives other people have imagined for them.

But this is also a story about friendship. About the people who hold the rope for us when we’re attempting something difficult.

What I loved about Crux wasn’t simply the suspense of the climbing scenes, although they’re extraordinary. It was the reminder that the most important part of a climb isn’t necessarily reaching the summit.

Sometimes it’s what happens when you reach the hardest part—and discover what you’re made of.