Crux

Set in the Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree National Park, the novel follows Daniel "Dan" Redburn and Tamarisk "Tamma" Callahan, two 17-year-old best friends, through their senior year of high school. Both are aspiring rock climbers from impoverished families, united by a shared dream of going professional. Their friendship is tested by family crises, depression, and the question of whether their dreams are brave or reckless.

Dan and Tamma are introduced walking out to Fingerbang Princess, a 35-foot highball boulder problem: a short route on an exceptionally tall boulder, climbed without ropes. The route was first ascended by a pioneering climber named Jane Sasaki and graded V4, a moderate difficulty rating. They climb without crash pads, spotting each other (standing below to guide a fall). Dan attempts the route but falls at the crux, a one-handed leap to a shallow pocket, and crashes into Tamma, who barely catches him. Tamma articulates her ambition to become the greatest trad climber who ever lived: a master of routes where climbers place their own removable protective gear. She envisions legendary ascents that prove grit and passion matter more than privilege.

Their lives outside climbing share hardship. Dan lives with his father, Lawrence, a construction worker, and his mother, Alexandra Redburn, a once-celebrated novelist who published her debut, Ephedra, at 18. Alexandra now rarely leaves her bedroom, living with depression and a failing bioprosthetic heart valve, a biological replacement for a defective one. Tamma lives in a pink trailer with her mother, Kendra, a diner waitress; Kendra's boyfriend, Hyrum, a drug dealer; and her younger brother, Colin. Tamma's father broke her jaw when she was four, and Kendra left him soon after. Alexandra and Kendra were once inseparable friends but fell out years ago when Kendra remarked, "I could've been a writer if I'd had the chance," which Alexandra took as an attack on her achievement. At a family dinner, Alexandra reveals she has set aside $13,000 for Dan's education. Both parents warn him against Tamma and urge him toward security: a degree, a career, health insurance. Lawrence explains that Alexandra's literary fortune was destroyed by medical bills, and the couple wants Dan to avoid sharing their fate.

Through the fall, Dan and Tamma work Fingerbang Princess relentlessly. Another climber dies on the boulder the same night Dan sends the route, completing it for the first time, on November 23. In a pivotal late-November session, Tamma delivers a monologue framing both Alexandra's and Kendra's failures as cautionary tales about fear, urging Dan to reject the safe path his parents prescribe. Immediately afterward, she sends Fingerbang Princess with the cleanest ascent Dan has ever witnessed.

Part II opens with new possibilities. Tamma discovers a dumpster full of vintage 1970s climbing gear, including hexes and nuts (metal pieces wedged into rock cracks for protection), helmets, and an old rope. No one monitors where they drive, giving them access to roped climbing in Joshua Tree for the first time. They set a benchmark: If they can send Figures on a Landscape, a classic 5.10b face climb (a roped route graded at the upper end of intermediate difficulty) deep in the park's Wonderland area, they will know they have a real chance. Tamma leads their first trad route on Intersection Rock but takes an enormous fall when a bolt pulls free. The old rope sustains a coreshot, a gash exposing the core strands, and she narrowly survives.

Soon after, Tamma's older sister, Sierra, faces a crisis when Sierra's husband, Brad, falls asleep holding their newborn, River, who rolls onto a tile floor and sustains a traumatic brain injury. Tamma spends exhausting days alone caring for Sierra's other children while Sierra stays at the hospital. Brad visits but cannot bring himself to touch or hold River, then walks away and does not return.

On Christmas Eve, Alexandra collapses in severe heart failure and is helicoptered to a trauma hospital. Dan knows his mother refused another surgery, but Lawrence authorizes emergency open-heart surgery. Alexandra is placed on ECMO, a machine that oxygenates blood externally, and remains intubated in the ICU for 48 days. During the hospital stay, Alexandra tells Dan she never wanted children and that raising him cost her a writing career. Dan reads Ephedra for the first time, opens a bank account to receive the $13,000 his mother saved, and rewrites his college personal statement with raw honesty.

Tamma, separated from Dan to care for the children, signs up for a bouldering competition in Los Angeles and trains obsessively, waking before dawn to hitchhike into the park and climb. A fellow climber reveals that Sasaki's sandbagged grading (rating climbs easier than they actually are) makes Fingerbang Princess really V6 with V7/V8 cruxes, reframing their accomplishment as far more significant.

At the competition, Tamma meets Paisley Cuthers, the elite young climber she has resented and idolized. Tamma advances to semifinals by flashing (completing on her first attempt) a hand-crack problem none of the other competitors can execute but tears a finger tendon, ending her run. Paisley's mother and coach, Stella Cuthers, delivers a pivotal lesson: Tamma excels at slab climbing (low-angle routes demanding balance and friction) but lacks fitness for steep terrain, and expecting to outperform better-trained competitors is unreasonable. Climbers are entitled to the attempt, not the top. On the drive home, Tamma realizes she and Dan have been seeking proof they could "make it," when doubt and suffering were inseparable from the endeavor itself.

Dan visits Kendra and comes to understand that Kendra's long-ago remark was a bid for comfort, not an attack, but Alexandra, consumed by fear that she was a fraud, could not extend generosity. Dan concludes that fear ruins people when it goes unconfronted.

Alexandra is eventually discharged but in late April announces she is leaving for a teaching position in Texas. She sees Dan's acceptance letters, including a full scholarship to a liberal arts school in the Pacific Northwest, tells him this is "everything I wanted," and departs. That night, Dan accepts the scholarship online, hating himself for the decision but unable to summon the courage to choose Tamma's path.

Dan insists on attempting Figures on a Landscape as a final test. Tamma argues that no climb can provide the existential certainty he seeks but reluctantly agrees, requiring 12 weeks to rehab her injured finger. On the morning of May 22, Dan leads the route brilliantly but falls on the final unprotected stretch. The coreshot rope splits over Tamma's belay device. Tamma is ripped from her stance atop a pillar and catches the severed rope in midair but cannot hold it. Dan falls roughly 80 feet and survives with a shattered tibia, broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a head injury. Tamma fashions a splint and carries him nearly two miles through the desert on her back, talking ceaselessly to keep him conscious.

Dan graduates on crutches, his leg held together by external fixators, metal frames and pins stabilizing the bone from outside the body. That night, he gives Tamma a check for $12,500, the remainder of Alexandra's savings, telling her to fund her climbing career. Over the summer, Tamma cares for Sierra's children and works at Target. Then Kendra, listed as cosignatory on the bank account, withdraws every dollar. Tamma is left with nothing.

Dan arrives at college, haunted by a vivid memory of Tamma carrying him through the Wonderland. Tamma, alone on a desert highway with $40 in cash, flips a quarter to decide whether to leave for Indian Creek, a famed crack-climbing destination in Utah, or return to the children. Before uncovering the coin, she knows her answer: She will stay, care for the children, train for competitions, and call Paisley for help. She reframes her situation not as defeat but as the start of a new problem, a terrifying, unprotected line through the rest of her life, and resolves to face it with the same courage she brought to Fingerbang Princess.