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.