Crux

This is a coming-of-age story about two high school kids: Dan and Tamma are best friends and desert rats, the kind of teenagers who live by instinct, who spend more time outside than anywhere else.

Dan is steady and capable and quietly depressed. Tamma is a foul-mouthed firecracker, minute in stature and impossible not to love. Together, they make a perfect literary duo. Their friendship feels earned and intimate and real, the kind that comes from their own history together and that of their mothers before them.

When they aren’t studying or covering for their families in the ways teenagers living in near poverty often do, they are out climbing absurdly dangerous boulders with no equipment. Not to prove anything, not for glory, but because being on the rock feels like the only place where they can both win, and together.

Crux understands how desire works in young people. How wanting something badly can feel physical. How testing yourself can feel like devotion even when it is certifiably insane. This is a novel about friendship, about risk, about growing up in circumstances that create a different set of opportunities for two people as close as can be.

Tender and devastating in a quiet way, this is a book for readers who crave stories about youth, loyalty, and the moments that shape us long before we realize they are doing so.

PS — It’s by the same author of Snow Falling on Cedars.

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