Apparently this is the year of Everest. Earlier this year I read Into Thin Air in hope that I 
could teach it. It didn’t fit into what I was looking, but I happened upon the book Peak. It’s the story of a young man, Peak, who’s parents are rock climbers but are now divorced. Due to climbing a New York skyscraper, Peak has to either face juvy or go live with his Dad in Asia. Making the choice to live with his dad, Peak soon discovers that his Dad doesn’t just want to travel around Asia, but wants Peak to climb the northern face of Everest.
As the book progresses to getting Peak onto the mountain, I worried that this was going to turn into a less-traumatic version of Into Thin Air. Luckily that didn’t happen. And it was set in Tibet while Air was on the southern, Nepalese side of Everest. I appreciated this change of scenery because I feel like most people aren’t as familiar with the northern face.
Hidden amongst the usual coming-of-age troupe with the father-son conflicts as well as recognizing first-world privilege, Peak also gives us a view of just how political it is to climb Everest. If you’re climbing on the northern side, you’re in Tibet which is under Chinese control. That creates some conflicts especially since many of the sherpas on the northern side are Nepalese. We also get to see some of how the sherpas are treated and how there’s almost a class system that has emerged between the wealthy, Western climbers and the sherpas who work with them.
I liked reading about this new point of view and I thought the young adult narrator was reliable and realistic. Although I did find their path to the summit a little too easy to be believable. All in all a good summer read.