Dixon, Descending
A Novel
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- ¥1,000
発行者による作品情報
Finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award
Finalist for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Prize
Longlisted for the Crook's Corner Book Prize
“Compelling.”—The Boston Globe
“Poignant…heartbreaking.”—The Christian Science Monitor
“This one hits hard.”—Publishers Weekly
When Nate suggests that they attempt to be the first Black American men to summit Mount Everest, his younger brother Dixon can’t refuse. The two are determined to prove something—to themselves and to each other.
Dixon interrupts his orderly life as a school psychologist, leaving behind disapproving friends, family, and one particularly fragile student. Once on the mountain, Nate and Dixon are met with extreme weather conditions, oxygen deprivation, and precarious terrain. But as much as they’ve prepared for this, Mt. Everest is always fickle. And in one devastating moment, Dixon’s world is upended.
Dixon returns home and attempts to resume his job, but things have shifted: for him and for the students he left behind. Ultimately, Dixon must confront the truth of what happened on the mountain and come to terms with who can and cannot be saved. Dixon, Descending offers us a captivating, shattering portrait of the ways we’re reshaped by our decisions—and what it takes to angle ourselves, once again, toward hope.
“Outen understands first-class human drama.”
—Gabriel Bump, author of The New Naturals
“The most engulfing, transporting, deeply humane novel I’ve read in ten years.”
—Monica Wood, author of How to Read a Book
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Outen shines in her debut about two brothers and their consequential climb on Mount Everest. Charter school psychologist Dixon Bryant sets a goal with his older brother, Nate: to be the first Black American men to summit the mountain. It sounds like a grand adventure, but during their April 2011 stay at base camp, where they wait for clear weather, they both wonder if they've underestimated the danger. After a foreboding scene involving an avalanche, Outen skips ahead to the fall of that year, with Dixon back at work. His colleagues' subdued fanfare about his achievement implies that all did not go well on the mountain. Dixon's return to the school proves short-lived, and as he retreats into isolation, Outen metes out the story of his and Nate's ill-fated climb. Dixon has lost all but two of his toes, and he wears a prosthesis molded in "white man's nude," prompting him to wryly wonder if Black men aren't "expected to lose toes... or just not to replace them." As the reader gets oriented as to what happened to Nate, Outen credibly portrays the uncanny sensations of Dixon's emotional and physical recovery ("He found himself in an afterlife he could not quite make out"). This one hits hard.
