I read the novel Descent on a whim at the recommendation of a coworker and a student in one of my summer classes.  It was a page-turner to rival the likes of James Patterson.  What I wasn’t expecting was the surprisingly intricate prose.  I was reminded of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The subject matter was dark, but written gorgeously. While on vacation in the mountains, a teenage girl goes on a run with her younger brother following on a bike for protection.  Disastrously, the brother is injured and the girl is kidnapped.  This is not too much of a spoiler since it occurs in the first few pages of the novel.  The rest of the book is varying accounts told from the perspectives of each family member (and others) spanning several years of searching for the girl, dealing with life without her, and hoping she’s still alive.

The characters are well-developed and each of their motivations, fears, and doubts is picked apart like clues at a crime scene.  Several themes that stood out for me were the ways in which we cope with tragedy, the power of survival instinct, and the lengths we go to for those we love.

Some of the scenes were too intense, gruesome, and mature for children.  One brutal rape scene in particular is much too graphic to be allowed in my psych facility school library.    But that intensity is part of what made the book hard to put down.

This DESCENT into depravity is paired with breathtaking views of snow-capped mountains, deep ravines, and forests.  Whether by escape, rescue, or death, the reader needs resolution of some kind, any kind, which makes the book impossible to put down.