How Gabriel Tallent’s novel ‘Crux’ explores the risks of climbing and life

On a video call, Gabriel Tallent is recounting a terrifying climbing experience he hoped to capture in his second novel, “Crux,” a relentlessly intense but often funny coming-of-age story.

“I was on a climb called Batwing Deluxe,” he recalls, describing a 20-foot unprotected portion of the climb that he was not prepared for. “There’s a piece of gear you could use, but I didn’t bring it. I went into it really confident. Then I accidentally stepped on my laces and untied the lace of my shoe.

SEE ALSO: Like books? Get our free Book Pages newsletter about bestsellers, authors and more

“I started sweating. My shoe filled with sweat. The longer I thought about it, the sweatier I got. My shoe was getting looser and looser. Finally, I had to kick my shoe off. I needed to reach up and step, but I didn’t have a climbing shoe on. So I just stood there losing it. When you’re young and you have these experiences climbing, your sanity begins to crumble.”

In the novel, the perspective shifts between Dan and Tamma, two best friends in high school who love to climb together. Tallent, who is originally from Mendocino, set the novel in the Mojave Desert and Joshua Tree National Park. 

Of the pair, Dan is smart and seemingly steady, though with a simmering depression exacerbated by his mother’s isolation and failing health; his parents are pressuring him to ditch the rocks – and Tamma –  to focus on getting into college. 

Tamma, who is gay, is a roiling stew of adolescent emotions further fueled by physical abuse suffered in childhood at her father’s hands and by the neglect and disdain dumped on her by her mother. Dan and climbing are the only future Tamma can imagine.

Throughout, Tallent intertwines the sport’s esoteric lingo through his characters’ emotions, finding connections between the jargon and their own experiences and feelings. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. Did you set out to write a novel about climbing or to write about these kids?

I wrote a novel about climbing that didn’t work. It was about climbers at the cutting edge of the sport, and they’re magnificent, talented athletes. But it wasn’t moving. 

Then we had my son Hayden, but things were touch-and-go with his birth – we lost his heartbeat and he was born by emergency C-section. When you’re holding your kid for the first time, and you’re coming apart emotionally, you re-evaluate everything and wonder: What would you articulate to a child about what matters in life? 

So I rewrote the book, chasing that feeling about what matters. I wrote a book about these two characters using climbing. I wanted to write a book about the friendship and passion of these characters. It’s not a romantic love but a friendship love– that’s been my experience in climbing. 

Q. Was it hard to capture their distinctive voices and shift perspectives?

I spent a lot of time talking to myself. I had a crack machine [a training tool for climbers] in my room, where you’re climbing on a manufactured crack. I would do laps and talk like them for hours, rehearsing how they speak. Then I would write 50 or 60 pages of them talking before cutting it down. 

They’re different polarities. Tamma has a madcap quality, playful, very jokey.

Dan is more severe. He’s in the teeth of depression. And so it’s a little bit more agonized. Because Dan is quieter, it’s harder to show the depth of his intelligence, so I had to let him off the leash sometimes. He’s a force to be reckoned with. And both of them are hyped up on hormones and full of idealism. It hasn’t been crushed out of them yet. I spoke like that. As a teen, I was reading a lot of Marcus Aurelius and had notebooks of things I copied down from Socratic dialogues in order to quote them to my friends.

Early readers responded badly to Tamma and said no one is going to like her – she’s galling and obnoxious and reckless. I was agonizing over whether she could stay that way with all the weird things she says. Then I was climbing next to a couple of girls, and they were saying the skankiest things. So I thought, “This is perfect. I’m gonna double down on it.”

Q. Not only is Dan depressed, but so is his mother, Alexandra, who had early success writing fiction, then stalled out. Was that emotionally autobiographical?

When I start with a book, I have a life experience that I want to get at. In a novel, you make up stuff and try to construct a story that illuminates what you saw in your life while using none of the real circumstances. You’re telling lies upon lies to get to the kernel of truth. But then you need a detail, so I made Alexandra a writer because I’m a writer. I folded back in details of your life; I struggled with profound depression after my first novel, “My Absolute Darling,” and was trying to write my way out of it back towards hope and aliveness. So I put those fears and experiences in. 

Q. Why was it important that Dan and Tamma’s mothers had once been close friends before a terrible rift?

This is a book about two kids with a dream. As Americans, we slide so easily into the idea that it is always good to pursue a dream. I wanted to complicate that narrative; Alex pursues her dream, and it destroys her life. So that undermines the mythological, American bootstrapping reading of the book. 

And I wanted to write about the parents as people who self-destruct, so there’s menace in there for Dan and Tamma. For them, it has to be more than just, What am I going to do with my life?

I wanted these broken adults to show that decisions have weight. Yes, you can make life-destroying mistakes, so you should chase what matters because if you don’t, you can end up without it. 

Q. Did you want readers to feel a certain way about Dan’s dilemma about climbing versus college?

A book is a portable wilderness. I’m trying to give you the opportunity to explore, so it has to stay open-ended. But I am trying to capture what I think is the life-defining importance of friendship and love.

I want to drive you toward Dan seeing the importance of Tamma and of risk-taking. Everyone in my generation went to school because they had to, and people like Dan who had lurking mental health issues often ended up failing out or committing suicide. And the rest of us are ravaged with student debt. 

There’s a narrative about what you had to do with your life. The book is challenging that narrative and helping you see your way out of it. That’s true for Tamma in a different way – it’s inculcated in Tamma that no one will help her but that’s not true. She’s just not aware of that. 

To grow up and achieve your dreams, you have to destroy the ideas with which you have been inculcated. 

Gabriel Tallent discusses the novel ‘Crux’

When: 7 p.m., Jan. 23

Where: Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E Colorado Blvd., Pasadena

Information: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-01-23/gabriel-tallent

When: 11:30 a.m., Jan. 24

Where: {Pages} @ Barsha Wines & Spirits,  917 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Manhattan Beach

Information: https://pagesabookstore.com/event/2026-01-24/special-author-luncheon-gabriel-tallent