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Dixon, Descending

A Novel

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Dixon, Descending

By: Karen Outen
Narrated by: JD Jackson
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About this listen

“Compelling.”—The Boston Globe

“Poignant…heartbreaking.”—The Christian Science Monitor

“This one hits hard.”—Publishers Weekly

When Nate suggests that they attempt to be the first Black American men to summit Mount Everest, his younger brother Dixon can’t refuse. The two are determined to prove something—to themselves and to each other.

Dixon interrupts his orderly life as a school psychologist, leaving behind disapproving friends, family, and one particularly fragile student. Once on the mountain, Nate and Dixon are met with extreme weather conditions, oxygen deprivation, and precarious terrain. But as much as they’ve prepared for this, Mt. Everest is always fickle. And in one devastating moment, Dixon’s world is upended.

Dixon returns home and attempts to resume his job, but things have shifted: for him and for the students he left behind. Ultimately, Dixon must confront the truth of what happened on the mountain and come to terms with who can and cannot be saved. Dixon, Descending offers us a captivating, shattering portrait of the ways we’re reshaped by our decisions—and what it takes to angle ourselves, once again, toward hope.

“Outen understands first-class human drama.”—Gabriel Bump, author of The New Naturals

“The most engulfing, transporting, deeply humane novel I’ve read in ten years.”—Monica Wood, author of How to Read a Book

©2024 Karen Outen (P)2024 Penguin Audio
African American Literary Fiction Tear-jerking

Critic Reviews

Longlisted for the Crook's Corner Book Prize

A Library Journal Editors' Pick

Dixon Descending is well-researched. The reader is dropped into the world of ice axes and crampons, pee bottles and carabiners, feeling every lick of wind on the mountain. But the novel uses the climb itself as a framing device to explore not just what drives people to do such things, but also what the consequences are of surviving when others don’t. Outen clearly loves her characters deeply, and writes Nate and Dixon’s compelling story with love.”Boston Globe

“Outen’s detailed accounts of climbing Everest are so engrossing, and her depiction of grief and the many different forms it takes and the burdens it creates are compelling and insightful. This is a story I will not soon forget.”Buzz Magazine

"Dixon’s story compels readers to consider the price of ambition and what it means to face our own mortality."Chapter 16

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