Genre: Suspense
Publisher: Bethany House
Publication Date: March 2007
Reviewed by Tim George
Patrick Nolan is not the typical teenage boy. He is a good student, reasonably well grounded, and enjoys spending every free moment hanging out with his father. On one of their weekend rock climbing excursions father and son make a pact. The woman in their life has been asking for a patio for a very long time. Together they decide it is time to quit being so selfish and fulfill their promise. But, as they arrive home a neighbor meets them with grim news. The promise can never be realized because mother and wife has been found dead of an apparent suicide while they were gone.
In the weeks following the death, everything changes about the two men’s lives. And like typical men, both son and father seek to deny their pain by selling everything and moving to the mountains they both love to climb. What begins as a unique bonding experience ends up driving a wedge in their relationship that only something bigger than both of them can mend.
In High Places highlights yet another of Tom Morrisey’s real-life passions for adventure, the close-knit yet highly competitive world of climbing. As in his other adventure novels, Morrisey displays first-hand knowledge wrapped in expert prose. His stories suck you into a world, foreign to most of us, and leave you wishing you had gone there before. Blink and you will find yourself hanging from a piton dangling over the wilds of West Virginia.
Like the sport it depicts, this is not a safe story. While faith or lack thereof, is a key element in the lives of both Patrick and Kevin, there is no neat conclusion. Both father and son must confront the shallowness of their lives and the paths they choose. Written from the son’s point of view as he looks back on the defining period of his life, In High Places reads like a memoir. Deep questions are left unanswered leaving nothing left to cling to except hope. But hope, set on the right thing, is all we need to hold us even when we fall from the high places.
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