Forget Me Not: A Memoir

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It’s a tale of love, parenthood, familial bonds, honor, integrity, struggle, tragedy and the selfishness and selflessness that are inherent in the climbing ethos. I felt myself identifying with the author due to her style of writing and because of her husband's letters. So I guess this is more of a contemplation on Forget Me Not, a book I enjoyed immensely, and one that truly moved me. Alex Lowe death was caused by an Avalanche, a dream that his wife Jen had had a day before the trip.

From the reviews -- and even, if taken out of context, a sentence or two in Krakauer's forward -- I had to assume this was some sort of angry or at least pitiable self portrait of a woman abandoned in life and death by her selfish climber husband. Jennifer Lowe-Anker has combined the landscapes, animals and people of her native Montana with a unique approach to painting.While it is absolutely tragic that Alex died so young, he was doing one of the two thing on earth that he loved the most. The marriage of Conrad Anker and Jenni Lowe grew from the aftermath of a 1999 avalanche that nearly killed Anker and did kill his best friend and Lowe’s then husband legendary climber Alex Lowe. If Alex would have lived long enough to getting around to writing a book it would have been beautiful and intriguing; he was someone who had a way with words.

I felt like it dropped off a bit in the last two chapters, but I am grateful for Jenni's vulnerability in writing a book like this. I was simply overwhelmed (in a good way) by Jennifer's captivating voice, her beautifully descriptive passages of the beauty in her surroundings, her meticulous record-keeping to reconstruct the past, and her frank, introspective view of the meaning of it all.

He is the author of best-selling non-fiction booksInto the Wild, Into Thin Air, Under the Banner of Heaven, and Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillmanas well as numerous magazine articles. I stumbled across it because I am such a huge Jon Krakaur fan, and found that he had contributed to the Forward. And despite this contradiction, I still felt that her narrative voice was unusually trusting in her readers, and all the lovelier for this. We follow the author as her desires crystallize; as she makes far-reaching choices about how to live her life; as she experiences the joys and anxieties that resulted, the burdens, the isolation and ultimately the tragic loss she must have foreseen.