An uplifting memoir from a strong female voice that shows the restorative power of mountain walking
Just Another Mountain
by Sarah Jane Douglas
Foreword by Sir Chris Bonington
Elliott & Thompson / 20 June / hardback / £14.99
“Loads of people get horrible diagnoses all the time so really it isn’t anything special or extraordinary that I found myself with membership to the cancer club. To be honest, I’d been expecting it, but the news was still received like a swift kick to the balls. For me, the hardest thing to get my head around was the fact that twenty years earlier I’d held my own mum’s hand when breast cancer stole her life from mine. It had taken me most of my adulthood to recover from her loss... Faced with my diagnosis, there was only one thing I could do, the thing I’d come to rely on so much these last few years. I had to put one foot in front of the other, and just keep walking.”
In 1997, at the age of 24, Sarah lost her mother to breast cancer. Alone and adrift in the world, she very nearly gave up hope – but she’d made a promise to her mother that she would keep going no matter what. So she turned to the beautiful, dangerous, forbidding mountains of her native Scotland.
By walking in her mother’s footsteps, she learns to accept her own troubled past, finding the strength to overcome her grief – and, ultimately, to carry on in the face of her own diagnosis twenty years later.
Searingly honest and utterly relatable, bringing the exhilarating triumphs and challenges of mountain walking to life with wit, charm and raw candour, Just Another Mountain is a story of hope and redemption, of a mother and a daughter, and of how we can learn both to live and to love. Sometimes, all you can do is put one foot in front of the other … and just keep walking.
Talking points
Mountain climbing – from Scotland’s Munros to Kilimanjaro and the Himalayas
Mother daughter relationships and dealing with loss
Unpicking the mystery of the death of her Mother’s greatest love (and the man who was nearly her stepfather), Gerry, in the Himalayas
Female friendship
Cancer – and sanity saving daily walks throughout the course of treatment
About Sarah Jane Douglas
Sarah Jane Douglas writes the popular blog ‘Smashing Cancer in the Face’. She is an artist and former teacher who lives with her two teenage sons in an old fishing village on the northeast coast of Scotland, is a lover of mountains and is proud to be Munroist number 5764. This is her first book.
Sarah actively fundraises for Cancer charities. Last year The Show (Breast Cancer Care) raised £150,000, and Sarah also arranged a ‘Full Monty’ to raise money for Maggie’s Highlands.
Sarah is available for interview, features and events.
More information
For more information about this book, please don't hesitate to get in touch.
