Crux

This tense and staggering tale of rock climbing and family demons from Tallent (My Absolute Darling) explores the cost of following one’s dreams. Best friends and high school seniors Daniel Redburn and Tamma Callahan steal every spare moment to climb the rock formations of Joshua Tree National Park. Dan is a straight-A golden child under enormous pressure from his family to shed burnout Tamma and become the first of the Redburns to attend college. Tamma, a lesbian, is a social outcast and troublemaker. Uninterested in school, she dreams of becoming the world’s best rock climber. But in a landscape where everything feels “luminous with meaning” to these California desert rats, their families’ entwined past bears down hard. Dan’s mother, Alexandra, a runaway writer once taken in by Tamma’s working-class mother, Kendra, has a congenital heart defect, but the money that could save her life has been set aside for Dan’s future. Meanwhile, Tamma’s chaotic home life is rife with alcoholism, neglect, and sexual assault, and further complicated by Kendra’s long-held bitterness at never doing anything with her own life. As Tamma becomes increasingly reckless in her climbs and Dan contemplates a future without the one person who really understands him, each wonders if there is any “version of oneself other than the self one already finds oneself to be.” The answer is in Tallent’s novel, a brutal portrait of finding hope in an unforgiving landscape. It’s a towering coming-of-age saga packed with muscle and heart. Agent: Joy Harris, Joy Harris Literary. (Jan.)