A Light Through the Cracks: A Climber's Story

When I had my first child years ago and was mom-trapped in a chair for three hours while she napped on me, I read my first novel about climbing, Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer detailing the deadly 1996 Mt. Everest expedition that claimed the lives of eight climbers. This book was followed soon after by Anatoli Boukreev’s book The Climb telling his side of that same story. For someone who’s never climbed anything taller than a steep hill, I have a strange draw to these kinds of stories!

Fast forward almost three decades, and when Amazon First Reads offered A Light Through the Cracks: A Climber’s Story, a 2024 memoir written by one of the all-time most successful female rock climbers, American Beth Rodden, I grabbed it. I’m not sure what inspired me to finally read it two years later, other than craving a non-fiction read for a change, but I’m glad I did. Rodden’s story is quite a compelling one!

In 2000, Rodden, her then-boyfriend Tommy Caldwell - another renowned rock climber, and two other climbers were kidnapped during an expedition in Kyrgyzstan by militant rebels who held them captive for six days fraught with gun battles between opposing sides and forced marches. Only a dramatic, life-changing choice enabled their escape, but though they were physically safe again, the long-term mental effects were another story for Rodden. This is her story through the aftermath of that event and where life took her in the years that followed.

I thought Rodden’s vulnerable “warts and all” revelations were fascinating, but I’ll say this: if you don’t find detailed accounts of all manner of climbs, a fair share of technical climber jargon and an inside peek at some of the toxicity of that culture interesting, you may struggle with parts of this book. The kidnapping only covers the first small part of the book, but the majority is examining the after-effects on Rodden, particularly the trauma responses that fueled her extreme need for control and how it affected her intimate relationships and friendships.

 

A couple trigger warnings: besides the kidnapping, this touches on disordered eating, though more in a general way, and there’s a situation involving infidelity which I thought was portrayed questionably as far as the justification behind it, but I can accept that everyone responds to trauma in different ways. That said, the resolution of all these events felt satisfying in the end. I felt a whole range of emotions reading this and being a “fly” on those rock walls was both terrifying and exhilarating!

An interesting little bit of trivia which I didn’t find out until after I finished the book is that Rodden was invited to train actress Charlize Theron for her role as a rock climber/adventure junkie in her latest film Apex, which just released on Netflix a couple days ago. My hubby and I watched it last night, and I’d say Rodden trained her very well!

★★★★