The Mountain Story: A Novel, by Lori Lansens
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The Mountain Story: A Novel, by Lori Lansens
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Four lost hikers are about to discover they’re capable of something extraordinary.Nola has gone up the mountain to commemorate her wedding anniversary, the first since her beloved husband passed. Blonde, stick-thin Bridget is training for a triathalon. Vonn is working out her teenage rebellion at eight thousand feet, driven by family obligation and the urge to escape her mistakes. Still reeling from the tragic accident that robbed him of his best friend, Wolf Truly is the only experienced hiker among them, but he has come to the cliffs on his eighteenth birthday without food or supplies because he plans to take his own life. When a series of missteps strands this unusual group together in the wilderness, they soon realize that their only defense against the brutality of nature is one another. As one day without rescue spirals dramatically into the next, and misadventure turns to nightmare, these four broken souls begin to form an inextricable bond, pushing themselves and one another further than they ever could have dreamed possible. The three who make it home alive will be forever changed by their harrowing days on the mountain. From the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls, The Mountain Story is a fast-paced, suspenseful adventure and a gorgeous tribute to the resilience of the human spirit. Braving a landscape both unforgivingly harsh and breathtakingly beautiful, Nola, Bridget, Vonn, and Wolf find themselves faced with an impossible question: How much will they sacrifice for a stranger?
The Mountain Story: A Novel, by Lori Lansens- Amazon Sales Rank: #107515 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-06-30
- Released on: 2015-06-30
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review “The Mountain Story is an expertly crafted novel about how ordinary lives can be changed by an extraordinary mountain. If climbing speaks to how we can find truth and beauty in hardship, Lansens shows that it is also a way to see inside our souls. This is a survival story with a strong, beating heart. I loved this novel.” (Claire Cameron Bestselling author of THE BEAR)"The Mountain Story isa gritty, nail-biting tale of survival and self-revelation. Lori Lansens' lushand potent landscape is painted as vividly as her characters, whose afternoonnature walk becomes a terrifying trek to the very precipice of mortality.Pitted against the impartial elements and their own inner demons, four soulsdiscover that shared humanity is their only dependable lifeline." (Carol Cassella, bestselling author of Gemini)"Lori Lansens has created a heart-pounder of a book that is every bit as much of an emotional roller-coaster as an adventurous one. Filled with richly drawn characters, unexpected twists, and gritty details about survival, you'll want to read this right now. Unless, that is, you happen to be camping!" (Jodi Picoult)“At last an adventure story where everyone is not supremely competent. At last a wilderness story which because it’s fiction has an actual arc and not just a series of encounters. Wolf is one of the most incredible voices I’ve come across in fiction recently and his trailer park environment is stunningly described; at once as absurd as farce and yet hauntingly real. On the mountain, bad judgment and bad luck are the order of the day and your heart will be in your throat as the inevitability of death draws ever closer to one young man and three generations of city women lost in a very real and dangerous mountain wilderness. You may think twice about piling the kids in the car for your next hike!” (Helen Simonson, author of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand)“Lansens has written a colorful, adventurous wilderness survival novel…The realistic details, such as the traditional herbal medicine used to fight Nola’s broken-bone infection and threatening coyotes and vultures, provides the narrative’s raw edge. Genre readers will also be swept along as the suspense builds in this first-rate character driven thriller.” (Publishers Weekly)“Four hikers get lost on a mountain, struggling desperately to stay alive, and it’s all as chilling and gorgeous and full of suspense as a cracking line of ice on a frozen lake. A breathtaking look at how the past footholds the future and how even the bleakest terror can find its way to unfathomable beauty.” (Caroline Leavitt, New York Times Bestselling Author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You)"An adventure that pits spectacular danger in the present against the ever-present danger of the past." (Marina Endicott, author of Good to a Fault)"A riveting novel of heartbreak, heroism, and redemption. . .[with] equal measures of high drama and humanity that will keep readers spellbound until the last word." (Carol Shaben, author of Into the Abyss)“The Mountain Story is a feat of storytelling, sure to be one of the most memorable novels of the year, a skilled balance of thriller and domestic drama, of family secrets and struggle for survival. By its closing pages, it gains an almost devastating emotional force that accompanies the irresistible quality of its narrative drive: It’s a master class in fiction and its potential.” (The Globe and Mail)“We discover the truth behind the trio’s relationships as we learn what led Wolf to think he has nothing left to live for. Thanks, Lori; this one was definitely worth the wait.” (Library Journal, Editor’s Pick)"[Lansens] portrays strong, not-soon forgotten characters in this suspenseful, psychologically rich tale…Lansens brings the reader intimately into their plight: four harrowing days with barely any food or water, trapped in a canyon with seemingly no way down. Their ordeal profoundly affects the four survivors and changes the course of each of their lives.” (Booklist)"[Lansens] knows a thing or two about life-changing transformations and the rich territory from which she builds memorable worlds filled with exceptional experiences…What is obvious to her readers is her astonishing talent for writing distinct stories about people who do amazing things in extraordinary circumstances.” (Library Journal, Feature Interview)“The Mountain Story brims with twists and turns that keep readers turning the pages… Immensely readable, beautifully written and incredibly heart-breaking…it’s an extraordinary story of survival, heroism and redemption that will stay with you long after you read the last page.” (Associated Press, UK)“A thoroughly delightful reading experience. The Mountain Story isthe best kind of binge read: exhilarating, inspiring, and life-affirming.” (Quill & Quire (starred review))“Like a secret mountain trail, [this novel] twists, turns, and keeps surprising you until the very end…Well-paced and beautifully written, readers will find themselves missing sleep as they read on late into the night." (Winnipeg Free Press)“A harrowing tale becomes anengrossing saga of renewal and redemption. Lori Lansens has written an epic work suffused with raw emotional powerand resonance.” (Toronto Star)“Poignant and heartbreaking, this book rivets with its examination of what the body and soul need to stay alive." (Maclean’s)“A superbly crafted, tension-filled tale.” (NOW Magazine)“As Wolf makes one failed attempt after another to get help, he relives his troubled childhood and becomes caught up in the history and complicated relationships of the women.” (Kirkus Reviews)"A captivating tale of courage, love, and sacrifice, The Mountain Story is transporting. A young man and three women accidentally take a hero's journey that inspires the better angels in all of us." (Amy Scheibe, author of A Fireproof Home for the Bride)
About the Author Lori Lansens is the author of Rush Home Road, which was translated into eight languages and published in eleven countries, and The Girls, which was sold in thirteen territories and featured as a book club pick by Richard & Judy in the UK. She was born and raised in Chatham, Ontario, and now makes her home in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. The Mountain Story BEFORE My boyhood home on Old Dewey Road stood among similar clapboard bungalows in the older, grimier section of Mercury, upwind of Michigan’s largest rendering plant, with the train tracks near enough that I could distinguish passenger from freight by the way the house shook. A year and a half after my mother’s accident—that’s what we called it—my father briefly got sober and painted the entire house, inside and out, a dark, flat blue. Drowning Man Blue. Frankie said it was a tribute to Glory. She loved the color blue. Frankie said I was too young, only four years old when she passed away, to have an honest recollection of my mother, but I do. Glory Elizabeth Truly. In my favorite memory she wears a silky white dress with batwing sleeves—one I’ve never seen in photographs. She’s standing in front of a dressing room mirror, smiling at our reflection, and behind us is another mirror where I discover our infinity. “Always,” I say. My beautiful mother laughs and tells me I’m clever before covering my face with soft kisses and spinning me in her embrace. I glimpse us with each turn. Glory looks like an angel in that white dress. I remember the mornings with my mother the most, watching her get ready for work (kindergarten teacher) while Frankie (“entrepreneur”) slept upstairs. We talked in whispers as she made up her pretty face and spritzed her curls with lemon-scented hairspray. Before disappearing out the door, she’d turn to smile and then lay her hand on her heart to say she kept me there, even when she was away. After she died, Frankie had her name tattooed on his forearm—Glory, in a rainbow that arched over the word Always. I used to think it would have been truer if the tattoo said Glory Once or Glory Briefly or, even better, Sorry, Glory. I have never, to my recollection, called Frankie by any name other than his first. My ears were filled with the sound of it, usually shouted, often slurred, by the strangers who came and went from that smoke-choked blue house. Men who slammed doors and broke bottles. Women I didn’t know cooking food I wouldn’t eat. Children I’d never seen playing board games I didn’t own. I remember one time Frankie tossed me a package of gum and warned, “Share that with your sisters.” I turned around to find two freckled redheads I’d never seen before sitting behind me on the couch. Glory Always? She was only twenty-five (Frankie a full decade older) when she died. I have my mother’s smile, I’ve been told, but otherwise I’m the image of my father. I remember after a second-grade lesson about immigration, I’d asked Frankie the details of my heritage. He told me that Glory’s family came from England when she was a baby and that her parents, both older physicians, had died of natural causes before my mother graduated from teachers college. Frankie guessed they wouldn’t have liked him. It did occur to me that if Glory’s parents had lived longer, I might never have lived at all. When I asked about his side of the family, Frankie hesitated. He was secretive about his past, like me. “On my father’s side we were Trulinos until the nineteen thirties, but then my grandfather decided he wanted a more American-sounding name, so he changed it to Truly and that caused a rift and that’s how we ended up in Michigan. On my mother’s side we’re French Canadian and Cree. My cousins came down to visit us from Quebec one time. They were dark and lean. Badass. I take after my mother’s side. That’s how come I’m so stealthy. Why I like my feet bare.” There was this rotting cedar porch out front of our blue house from which I’d leap as a boy—towel-cape aflutter behind me—shouting, “I am Batman,” or “I am Superman,” but I remember one day I lost my cape, and I’d simply shouted, “I am . . . ME!” Frankie slammed his palm on the kitchen table and hollered through the open window, “That kinda arrogance’ll take you to Cleveland, Wolf! Cleveland and back!” Whether he meant to encourage, mock, or scold me, I still have no clue. My father has left me, my whole life, in a state of wonder. One spring day when I was thirteen, Frankie stood up from the kitchen table and announced, “We need to be near family now,” like the tragedy of my mother’s death was ten days, and not nearly ten years, old. “What family?” “We’re moving to California. This summer.” “Okay.” “We’ll stay with Kriket till we get on our feet.” I’d never been to California and neither had Frankie. I’d never met his sister Kriket (Katherine) and never knew them to be close. I figured Frankie had gotten himself into some kind of trouble in Mercury, a debt he couldn’t repay, or maybe he’d slept with somebody’s wife or girlfriend or sister or mother. You wouldn’t think women would go for an unemployed widower in a stained concert T-shirt, but there were plenty of pretty girls around to finger the rainbow on Frankie’s Glory Always tattoo. “I reek of pheromones,” he told me once, flapping his hands around his armpits, encouraging me to take a whiff. We made a plan to head for Kriket’s place in the California desert in late July. Frankie was vague when I asked about the future of the little blue house. (Later he told me he’d lost it in a bet.) He bulldozed Glory’s toiletries from their bathroom shelf shrine—the lemon-scented hairspray, prescription ointment for a patch of eczema, an unopened box of decongestant to relieve her springtime allergies—and threw them all into the trash. “Won’t need all this where we’re going, Wolf,” he said, which made me wonder why we’d needed it where we were. I spent a lot of time at the Mercury Public Library when I was kid. Frankie sent me there to borrow books by way of free babysitting. Miss Kittle was the head librarian, a buttoned-up brunette who, along with the rest of the staff, barely tolerated me. I couldn’t blame them. I stole doughnuts from the seniors’ meetings, made a mess of the shelves, and spent far too much time in the men’s room. Still, I loved the library. I loved books. I especially loved plump, berry-scented Miss Kittle. A few weeks before we left for the desert, Miss Kittle surprised me by calling out my name when I walked through the library doors. “Wolf Truly!” There was something different about Miss Kittle—her cheeks were pinker and her lips were glossed and her thick dark hair fell in waves over her shoulders. By the look of her face I wasn’t in trouble, which confused me. “I have something for you, Wolf,” she said. Miss Kittle had never spoken directly to me before. “Okay.” “I heard you were moving to Santa Sophia.” Her eyes were even prettier up close. “My aunt Kriket lives there,” I said. “That’s where I’m from,” Miss Kittle said. “My father still lives there. I visit every summer.” “California’s a long way from Michigan.” My cheeks were hot. “I had to move up here to help take care of my grandmother. I miss the desert.” “I’ll miss winter.” “Ah!” she said, raising her index finger. Then she reached beneath the counter and drew out a large, heavy book. “You won’t have to miss winter.” “I won’t?” “You’ll have the mountain,” she said, passing me the hefty book. “The Mountain in the Desert.” The moment I glimpsed the photograph on the cover—a helicopter shot of the pine-rimmed granite peak—I knew that mountain contained my destiny. The details leaped from the pages like some 3-D déjà vu: ten thousand feet at the summit; mother of the transverse mountain ranges; hundreds of miles of pristine wilderness; hunting ground of the Agua Caliente band of Native Americans; habitat of bighorn sheep, mountain lions, rattlesnakes; precipitation ten times higher than what falls in the desert below; torrential rains in spring and fall, blizzards in winter. It was a place I’d never heard of but felt that I’d already been. “You have to climb to the peak,” Miss Kittle said. “That looks pretty high.” “You take the tram most of the way,” she said, turning to the back of the book and pointing to a full-page photograph. “The ride up is almost vertical. Look.” It was. “This tramcar takes you from the Desert Station—the climate of Mexico—to the Mountain Station—the climate of northern Canada—in less than twenty minutes. Palms to pines.” “Cool,” I said. “You can climb to the peak from there. I only made it once,” she confessed. “It was cloudy.” “Too bad.” “Maybe I’ll try again when I’m in Palm Springs this summer to visit my father,” she said. “You should.” “Maybe I’ll see if you and your dad want to come with me. Frankie—right?” She blushed. Oh no, I thought. Frankie never came into the library, so I couldn’t imagine where the two had met. “Frankie. That’s right,” I said. “Do you know where in Santa Sophia your aunt lives?” “Verdi Village,” I said, remembering what Frankie told me. “Sounds familiar. I think it’s gated.” I knew nothing about gates. “Most of the gated places have golf.” VERDI VILLAGE did not have golf. Or gates. Or shimmering pools. Or tennis courts. Or decorative fountains. Or paved roads for that matter. Santa Sophia was a tidy desert town consisting of mostly guarded, affluent communities. But past the mission-style shopping malls, and beyond the fuchsia bougainvillea and the median beds of white aggregate and flowering cacti, and over the abandoned train tracks, thousands populated the thrice-foreclosed-upon Verdi Village mobile home development that bled out over two square miles of hard-baked, treeless earth. The original double-wide, pitch-roofed aluminum trailers were run-down, but at least they still had electricity and running water, unlike the second strata of mobile housing grown from the seeds of Airstream and Coachmen and Four Winds. Past that, the vagabonds had erected a haphazard crust of shacks and shanties, shelter for economic refugees, the mentally ill, and bikers. Locals called the place Tin Town. In those dangerous narrows grew children who knew too much too young but, sadly, always seemed to learn too little too late. It was hot as hell in Tin Town—it set the most records in the state for triple-digit temperatures. I can still smell the unwashed bodies and twice-fried sausage, cigarette smoke and cat shit; and I can hear the discontent like bad radio reception. But mostly I can feel it—the wind, constant through the San Gorgonio Pass, polishing the earth and nourishing the groves of wind turbines along the desert roads. You can see those ribbons of straight white stalks from eight thousand feet up the mountain. It’s a hell of a view.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful. Thrilling and thoughtful By Kate Vane Wolf at eighteen is a loner, child of a dead mother and a waster father, mourning the loss of his best friend, Byrd. One day he sets off up the mountain he and Byrd used to hike together with the intention of killing himself. Instead a chance encounter means he and three women become lost.The frame for the story is a letter from Wolf to his son, who is about to go to college. He is going to finally tell his wife and son the whole truth about what happened on the mountain. This tells us not only that Wolf made it back, but that he went on to have a very different life from the one he led before, and to give his son the kind of life he never had. He also tells the reader, right at the beginning, that not all of the three women survived.This is clever because it invites you not only to speculate about which of the women will die, but to consider, horribly, who you want it to be. And even while you know that there is no causal link between who `deserves' to live and who actually does, having those thoughts makes you complicit.Wolf's narration weaves together events on the mountain with the story of his life up to that point. It is well paced and dramatic. The characters are interesting and complex, the humour darkly dry. Wolf's father Frankie is both recognisable as a type and unique in his casual cruelty and neglect of his son. The scenes on the mountain feel convincing and the plot twists escalate the story. Occasionally a character does something stupid that just happens to crank the tension even higher, but given that they are cold, exhausted and dehydrated that is within the bounds of plausibility.The author asks some subtle questions about the nature of belief, of life's purpose and spirituality (look out for the character names) but she leaves the reader to come to their own conclusions. She keeps you guessing right till the end. She wraps up the loose ends (perhaps a little too neatly, given how unflinching the rest of the story is). I was gripped the whole way through and loved the voice of Wolf, with its heartbreaking mix of nihilism and hope.-I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful. The Mountain Story By Kindred It's best to read The Mountain Story as a parable of some kind instead of an adventure story about survival though it certainly holds up as such. There are plenty of heart stopping moments for the outdoorsy type as well as the couch potato and the story never wavers in its thrills. I just had a hard time putting these four people in the situation that caused the emergency. Stranger things have happened, and probably happened to you, but it was such a comedy of errors and bad judgments that it kept this one at four stars when the descriptive writing and thrilling story telling kept asking for five stars. The plot line wandered off and got in trouble faster than the characters.And speaking of characters, each of the four strangers who find themselves in danger, have their own reasons for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Wolf, the troubled eighteen year old who suffered more tragedies than someone his age should bear causing him to wish to say goodbye on the mountain, the older wise crone character, Nola who was on the mountain for her own goodbyes, Bridget, the aging neurotic in her mid- thirties who lives in her own reality that rarely overlaps the one surrounding her, and Vonn, the young woman who can’t seem to connect with anyone in a real way.The best thing the author did here was not make any of them ‘the’ hero. Each of them act in the wholly human way we all would if faced with such trauma as trying to survive on a cold mountain with no supplies and no idea what to do next. Wolf is set up as the one who had a small amount of knowledge from his trips up with his best friend, but his plans had not included coming down this time so he is as unprepared as the others. As the story progresses you find your loyalties shifting constantly and at times I found myself wishing I was there so I could happily throw each one of them off the mountain myself. That the author manages to continuously turn our opinions again and again is a monument to her talent.Frankly I wasn't expecting to love this book. I’m so so about the epic man vs. nature tale, but I actually devoured this one on the edge of my sofa. Even the conceit of the story being told by letter by Wolf years later to his son adds several surprises, some easy, some difficult. I recommend this one to just about everyone, just remember to forgive the characters a few moments of stupidity. After all, who can say when one decision will mean life or death? I now look forward to reading Ms. Lansen’s previous books.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful. The Mountain Story By Carol M The Mountain Story is about a motley group of hikers who become stranded on the mountain in Palm Springs. It is a survival story, and it is clear from the beginning that at least one survives and at least one does not.Though there are plenty of fast-paced adrenaline moments, and some graphic/gory injuries, overall this is not a fast-paced adventure story. It is far more reflective than that. The primary character has come to the mountain in a desperate depressive state, and much of the book is his recollections of a very screwed-up childhood, remembrance of a very close friend, and mourning a recent loss. The other characters are dealing with their own issues, which are slowly revealed. This is a very tightly written book, with lots of layers and themes, and great character development.
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