Another book review
Climbing Through: A Courageous Story of Grit, Healing, and Second Chances, by Melissa Strong.
I am breaking my Lenten silence on Substack to post this book review. I didn’t want to wait until after Easter in April to talk about this book. When someone you know writes a book AND gets it published AND it’s good, you must share it with the world.
In 2023, Brian and I took our last trip to Hueco Tanks— last, but hopefully not, you know, last-last. It was the first time we had both been there since 2017. My project for the two weeks we hoped to be there was Big Iron on His Hip, a wild V7 traversing climb in Martini Roof that I had “almost done” in 2015, if almost doing something is even a thing. So that’s where we went on one of our first days there. I don’t remember who got there first, but another couple arrived that seemed to be the same age as us. The woman definitely looked familiar to me, and when I saw her hands, I realized who she was.
It was Melissa Strong. I’d met Melissa once before, back in the days when we took our annual family trip to Hueco and met up with our friends Paul and April. Melissa and her husband Adam co-own the commercial guide service, Wagon Wheel Coopt, that Paul worked for, and on one of our tours, we ran into her, and Paul introduced us briefly. In the intervening years I’d heard about her again because of a horrible electrical accident she’d had that almost cost her her entire hands. It was a hard story and name to forget, and so I immediately knew who she was. As you do when climbing near other people, we struck up a conversation, probably starting out with, where are you from? Then I asked her if she was Melissa Strong, and told her that Paul and April were mutual friends and that we had met a long time ago and that I had heard about her accident. Melissa and her husband Adam were super friendly and easy to talk to, so conversation meandered from there.
Melissa and I also began taking turns trying Big Iron. Yes, the woman missing some fingers, the full use of her thumbs, and had skin grafts on her palms and fingertips was working on the same boulder problem as me. And folks, I didn’t make any more progress than she did. It’s true, MelissaIStrong. Watching her climb with her altered, or “new” hands, as she calls them in the book, was amazing— an inspiring and humbling experience.
Besides the boulder problem, age, and knowing Paul and April, we had another thing in common too; we both are writers— she was writing about her accident and return to climbing, and she’d scored a book deal already. Writers hear the good news about someone else’s writing successes— a book deal!— with mixed feelings, and so to be honest, I first felt a pang of envy. The pang didn’t last long, and since then I have followed her as she wrote and finished her book. And now it’s out, and I’ve had the honor of reading it. Hers is a story that needs to be out in the world.
Climbing Through is much more than a book about Melissa Strong’s accident and return to climbing. This is a book by a climber about living a life that includes failure and suffering and healing and love— but not the mushy kind. This is a story for everyone, even people who have never climbed before in their lives. There are chapters on the important moments in her life that were the building blocks of her own character and resiliency,— including a failed first marriage, struggling with infertility, and opening a new business— and the solid foundation of friends and family that support her, all of which she would end up relying on in the aftermath of the accident as her safety net.
I, of course, loved the climbing details in this book. Strong spends time explaining how climbing works to the non-climbing reader, though not too much time. It’s tricky to teach something while you are telling a story without the details distracting from the narrative itself. I think Strong does a good job with this by sharing how she learned how to climb. The only thing I wish is that she would have included more about how hard she climbed prior to the accident in order to emphasize the struggle of relearning how to climb post-accident. She is clear about how it feels to climb after her accident with her new hands, but I wonder, what did it feel like in her body before that, to climb super hard, to not struggle but flow? She does hint at it here and there, but Strong was— no, is!— a genuine bad-ass climber and has bragging rights.
I overruled myself, moved my hand, and latched the hold. The internal battle between my brain and my will continued, distracting me as I moved my foot, gracelessly, carelessly, to make the next hand movement. My foot slipped, I released the holds, and I stepped off and away from the wall. Quickly I examined my hands to make sure all of the skin was still in place. Pain screeched through me. I paused and breathed through it. If I could keep my foot on, maybe I could pull through a few more moves, I thought. Annoyed at myself for sloppy climbing, I tried to calm my nerves. You know how to climb. You can do this.
Besides the climbing, the best part to me was the solid and steady relationship Strong has with her and Adam’s family members, especially her parents. As a parent of budding adults myself, I appreciate a story where the familial bond remains strong, even when the kids move out and there is physical distance. Strong’s parents were with her throughout her life, supporting her all along the way. Though she is a strong person (pun intended), she recognizes that she couldn’t have done any of the hard parts of her life on her own.
The writing in Climbing Through is solid. Strong’s voice is consistent and steady. She doesn’t write in order to sensationalize. She doesn’t use flowery or strong emotional language. She is not melodramatic. Rarely does Strong even allow a personal pity party. I don’t know Strong very well, but I think to do so would be outside of her character. She tells her story as a matter of fact, and pulls the reader along willingly to the end.
Lastly, this is a good looking book. The cover is a cool photo of Strong climbing, and the paper quality and font and size of the text itself is really pleasing. It looks less like a self-published book than I was expecting. I’m no expert and have had little experience with this publishing company aside from maybe the old 1995 Sherman Hueco Tanks guidebook and How to Rock Climb! by John Long. FalconGuides, an imprint of Global Pequot Publishing Group, Inc., focuses mainly on putting out guidebooks— hiking, foraging, camping, nature— but occasionally they’ll publish a memoir. Climbing Through was a really good choice, and FalconGuides did a nice job with it.
Interested in purchasing this book? You can get it at Amazon, but here are some non-Amazon links:
Thank you. It's now on my list. I love how you came to be connected to the book's author.