Renowned American rock climber Beth Rodden's inspiring memoir about overcoming devastating trauma, refusing to be held hostage by fear, and taking a leap toward healing.
Beth Rodden was twenty years old and already an elite rock climber when a climbing excursion to Kyrgyzstan's Kara Su Valley in August 2000 escalated into a nightmare. Beth, her then boyfriend Tommy Caldwell, and fellow climbers Jason "Singer" Smith and photographer John Dickey, were held hostage for six days by rebels from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. The four climbers eventually overpowered one of their captors and escaped to a Kyrgyz army camp.
She and Caldwell train obsessively, achieving rock-climbing greatness and conquering each ground-breaking goal they set, all the while burying the terrors of Kyrgyzstan deep inside. Then comes an unexpected breaking point. For Beth, a woman at the top of her profession, the only way to overcome the anxiety that still controls her is to let go of the lifeline she's been clinging to. Blowing up her successful and familiar life, Beth clears a path to a new one - a healthy new normal beyond the anxieties of the past and the myopic pursuit of athletic perfection.
Charting a powerful journey of ambition, hope, love, physical and emotional endurance, and the true fulfilment of being oneself, A Light through the Cracks is Beth's story of climbing up and through life.
Illustrated with some colour plates.
By Beth Rodden.
Hardback, 301 pages.
Published 2024 by Brilliance Publishing.
ISBN: 978-1-503903-81-4.