Crux by Gabriel Tallent (pub. 2026)

Read and discuss the novel Crux.

Plot Summary:

Tamma and Dan are 17-year-old best friends growing up in a California desert town blighted by the strip-mall nihilism of late capitalism. They’re poor. They’re unpopular. Their families are a wasteland. But they have each other and their great shared passion: trad rock climbing. Whenever they can, they head to a climbing route – sometimes a boulder at the edge of a disused parking lot, sometimes a cliff an hour’s hike into a national park – and climb, often with no gear but their bloodied bare hands and tattered shoes.

The pair of teens learn how to navigate risk, in every sense of the word, in this coming of age tale.