I am on a roll with the books this year (knock on wood). Still waiting for the first clunker, lol. This book was NOT it.

Honestly, I'm really not normally a person who cries when reading. [b:The Housekeeper and the Professor|3181564|The Housekeeper and the Professor|Yōko Ogawa|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1344313042s/3181564.jpg|3214322] touched me and brought a tear to my eye, but like sobbing? Um, no. Maybe it is premenopause. I don't know, but this book really made me cry. The author does a really great job of putting the reader in the midst of a life threatening crisis in a way that you are practically in his brain as he tries to save himself. I was so relieved when he finally emerged (not a spoiler, I mean the guy wrote a book about it, lol), that I sobbed. His resilience touched me.

The author paces the book well. He gives enough background information to make you care about him and his friend, Mike, and then the middle section is riveting. I don't know much about mountaineering, but I think books about it appeal to me because I love the idea of being outdoors doing physical activity, but this sport has an element of risk that I personally can't get my mind around. I'm fascinated by people for whom this is their passion. [b:Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster|1898|Into Thin Air A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster|Jon Krakauer|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1463384482s/1898.jpg|1816662] is one of my favorite all time books.

So for me, this book teetered toward five stars. I couldn't put it down. Two things made me give it four. The aftermath of the Rainier climb felt anticlimactic and a little overwrought. I was more interested in why Jim decided to climb again than I really was about how he found peace in the aftermath of a disaster. There was a stronger focus on the latter.

All in all though, if you like reading about outdoor adventure, I would absolutely throw this one on the TBR.

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Almost too hard to read because Davidson and Vaughan have provided such an overwhelming amount of detail in Davidson's escape from his fall into the crevasse. It really is incredible to realize how amazing it was that there were so many things that arose to make it almost impossible for him TO escape---but that he overcame! I was exhausted when he finally reached the surface but STILL realized he probably wouldn't make it without help. People actually saw him yelling and waving the red sharf from the rangers' hut about a mile away. How many things had to go exactly right? ( )

Fantastic! Loved it, even though I knew Jim would survive. Really gripping tale. Love that the source material is a lot of what he recorded. really hard to imagine how he recovered from the ordeal. The physical and mential challenges had to have been immense. ( )

In The Ledge: An Adventure Story of Friendship and Survival on Mount Rainier, Jim Davidson, with the help of Kevin Vaughan, shares some of his life's experiences, especially with mountain climbing. The main focus of The Ledge is the climb of Mt. Rainer he and his friend Mike Price undertook almost 20 years ago, in June 1992. This challenging climb changed Jim Davidson's life forever and took Mike's life. During the climb, Jim and Mike broke through a snow bridge and fell 80 feet into a glacial crevasse, landing on a narrow ledge.

After opening with some background stories and foreshadowing the accident to come, the book jumps back and forth in time until the fall happens in the timeline. Then it details the event and Jim's struggle to get out of the crevasse. As a result of the accident, Jim suffered from survivor's guilt and had another hurdle to overcome.

The book started out strong, but perhaps had a few too many details in the background stories. Once the climbing starts, anyone who has mountaineering and climbing experience will likely enjoy the detailed technical explanation of the climb(s). If you don't, the overwhelming number of details provided can become, well, overwhelming, and detract from the story.

What completes the story is not Jim's survival, but the determination it took to overcome adversity when the odds were not in his favor. He survived the tragic accident in more ways than one and was able to take the life lessons he learned from the event and use them to help him motivate others in their own personal growth. Jim Davidson is now a motivational speaker who has helped many other people.

While those who climb mountains or enjoy nonfiction accounts of adventures are going to appreciate this novel, others might be slightly put off by the amount of technical details. Yes, it's a solid nonfiction choice, however, the writing can be uneven in places. For me, it's highly recommended, with the admission that I didn't even try to follow the technical climbing information.
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Disclosure: I received this novel through the Goodreads First Reads program.
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A tragic tale of loss while climbing Mount Rainier told by the survivor. It's full of his guilt as he cries his memories onto the pages. It's less of an adventure story than a story of catharsis as the author tries to wrestle his demons by putting them onto words on the page. ( )