A mother made a difficult choice and now fears it was the
wrong one. She gave away her daughter for adoption so
she could continue her passion for mountaineering. Is it
too late to regain what she lost? THE DAMNABLE LEGACY poses
a riveting problem and lets us each ask what we would have
done differently.
Lynn Van Swol faces each challenge as it arises, including
a hungry grey wolf in the wilderness. Our narrator is,
unusually, a spirit watching the living. Another person
Beth watches is a teen girl called Frankie, who copes with
her troubled life in damaging ways. Beth's husband Ryan in
Oregon is not coping with his bereavement and doesn't want
to take the climbing holiday he'd agreed to do in her
memory. If he goes to tackle Alaska's Mount Denali, Lynn
will be his expedition leader. Lynn still has something to
prove on this summit. She has a store of memories that
she would like to pass on to her daughter someday - the
daughter she gave to adoption. Beth suspects that Lynn's
daughter is Frankie's mother, Raina, now in a self-
destructive lifestyle.
Frankie has become pretty much a professional pickpocket
and her self-reliance has blocked her off from feelings for
other people. She has a grandfather who wants to love her,
but the tough girl is getting into real trouble. Meanwhile
Lynn is headed up to Alaska, wondering how to bury thirty
years of regrets. We see the painstaking preparation, the
equipment and team arrangements needed to climb at this
level. And a storm front is closing in fast.
The device of the spirit narrator is unusual and as Beth
can't alter anything, the reason must be that this links
the different aspects of the story which don't at first
appear to have much in common. I find it hard to understand
Lynn's psyche - she gave away her daughter to be raised in
a secure family, yet keeps writing unsent letters to her,
promising that the climbing achievements are dedicated to
the girl. This seems as harmful as other behaviours
described, like a desperate wish to atone for her life
rather than a desire to get on and live her life.
Anyone interested in serious mountaineering will enjoy the
account of getting snowed in, sunburned and caught in an
avalanche all in one trip. The team turns out to be
insufficiently prepared or in some cases, trained. A
mountain like Denali means life or death. The more I read,
the more it seemed to me that if our narrator had really
loved her husband, making him undertake this trek was a
strange kind of way to show it. G. Elizabeth Kretchmer
lives in the Pacific Northwest and has studied writing;
this is her first novel. THE DAMNABLE LEGACY could be read
as a women's fiction novel or as a reflection on journeys
through life and the outcome of choices. While not all
storylines get completely resolved, at least we are left
with hope of a better future for young Frankie.
Lynn Van Swol still regrets the decision she made thirty years ago to place her
daughter for adoption so she could climb the highest mountains of the world.
Frankie Rizzoni is the troubled biological granddaughter Lynn has never
known. And Beth Mahoney is a minister’s wife with terminal cancer and the
only one who knows the relationship between the two. She designs a plan
upon her deathbed to bring Lynn and Frankie together, but now, narrating
from the afterlife, she must helplessly watch as her legacy threatens to
unravel. The Damnable Legacy is a story about both love and survival,
exploring the importance of attachment, place, and faith, and asking how far
we should go to achieve our goals⎯and at what cost.
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