A searching, uplifting memoir by the celebrated, groundbreaking climber: a journey of overcoming where the mountain’s highest peaks can only be reached by traversing the dark crevasses of the soul.

At twenty-seven, when Melissa Arnot Reid accepted a tank of oxygen just short of the summit of Mt. Everest, she felt ravaged by defeat. Driven by a relentless, lifelong quest to prove to herself, her family, and the world that she was enough, she had set herself an incredible goal—to become the first American woman to summit Everest without oxygen. The failure battered her spirit and left her struggling to keep her tenuous grip on hope.

In the candid and adventurous spirit of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, This Is Not a Book About Everest is a story of a life in which the most dangerous mountain faces became a refuge—until suddenly they, too, no longer seemed safe. From a childhood marked by conflict, betrayal, and predation, Reid propelled herself to the top of the mountain climbing world, summiting and guiding on the world’s most challenging peaks and establishing herself as a woman unafraid to throw elbows in a milieu dominated by men. And yet for every summit she attained, her valleys of inner turmoil—over her estrangement with the family she believed she’d destroyed as a child; over relationships that cycled through deception and infidelity—grew deeper and more self-destructive. Eventually, she could not keep these worlds from colliding, especially after a series of tragedies at dangerous elevations took the lives of her mentors and friends. Forced at last to face herself, Reid made her most perilous climb yet—toward the uncertain promise of forgiveness and self-acceptance.

A beautiful, aching memoir of a journey with life-and-death stakes on the mountain and off, This Is Not a Book About Everest bares the soul of one of the world’s greatest climbers, from the rarified heights visible only at thin-air altitudes to the dark depths home to demons familiar to anyone who has struggled to find compassion for themselves.