Like Jon Krakauer's best-seller Into Thin Air, an account of another climbing party on the mountain at the time, Mark's personal saga is filled with both triumphs and setbacks. Details of his fascinating and careful preparations as well as a moment-by-moment account of the climbs are included in a suspenseful and fast-paced first-person narrative. Readers will marvel at Mark's determination through high-altitude and ice training as well as the arduous daily workouts; they'll sympathize with his fatigue as he carries nearly twenty extra pounds of schoolbooks to Advanced Base Camp. They'll also feel the adrenaline pumping when they accompany Mark past the ever-shifting Khumbu Icefall, over three-hundred-foot crevasses, and up into the high-altitude "Death Zone." When his father is stricken with cancer back home, Mark's story also becomes an eloquent testimony to the unbreakable bond between father and son.