Regions of the Heart: The Triumph and Tragedy of Alison Hargreaves (Adventure Press)

Alison Hargreaves perished with five others in 1995 in a hurricane-force storm on her descent from the summit of K2, the world's second highest peak. Only 33 years old, she'd successfully scaled Everest five months earlier without the aid of oxygen--the first woman to do so. Drawing on Hargreaves's diaries and interviews with family members and acquaintances, British journalist-climbers David Rose and Ed Douglas trace her evolution from an energetic teenager who dreams of being the best female climber in the world to the person she is on her ascent of K2: a driven woman criticized in the British press for egotism and a lack of good judgment (she did, after all, climb the famously difficult Eigerwand in the Alps during the second term of pregnancy). "It eats away at me--wanting the children and wanting K2," she wrote in her journal. "I feel like I'm being pulled in two. Maybe they'd be happier if Mum was around but maybe summiting K2 would help make a better future for them."

Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air and David Breashears's IMAX documentary Everest have made the travails of high-altitude climbing irresistible entertainment for outdoors enthusiasts and armchair travelers alike. But in all the stories of hubris, superhuman endurance, and courage, rarely does a woman claim the spotlight and rarely are the hard domestic realities of the climber's life explored. Regions of the Heart breaks with this tendency. The authors re-create Hargreaves's complicated career by examining her hard-working middle-class English background, her marriage to a much older man who lives vicariously through her achievements, her rejection of more practical pursuits for the rush of climbing, her persistent fear of failure, and her financial insecurity; all these factors ultimately add up to her fatal decision to climb K2 despite worsening conditions and her two young children at home. "Going on the mountain was not the difficulty for her. Mountains were the one place she felt confident about what to do. Going home meant finally resolving her relationship with [her husband] and surviving as a single mother," the authors write. Less a tale of adventure and more an honest picture of one woman's struggle for fulfillment, Regions of the Heart puts into perspective Alison Hargreaves's choice of the mountain over life. --Rebecca Wright