Ellie Bartlett is stuck. Stuck in a job with a creepy boss. Stuck in the single lane of relationship hell. She needs an experience away from her tedious routine. An adventure where she can find happiness—and maybe even love.
Arriving in South America as a first-time backpacker, Ellie finds a guidebook on her hostel’s book exchange shelf. Someone has annotated it, scribbling cryptic messages in the margins. Intrigued, Ellie contacts the previous owner, who wrote their name on the inside cover under the heading THIS BOOK BELONGS TO.
The person she meets will change the course of her journey—and her life.
Present Day, 18th July – Mount Roraima, Venezuela
Where do you conquer fear?
Ellie hoped it was twenty yards away, on the edge of a 1200-foot cliff.
It better fricking be there.
Clouds swirled around the table mountain, which rose above the jungle like a block of unformed clay. Sprawled across its flat top was a landscape belonging to another world—twisted rock formations, quartz fields and unexplored caves. Off its sides cascaded some of the tallest waterfalls on our planet.
Ellie sat alone near the northern tip, shivering in a muddy t-shirt and feeling about as small as the tick she’d scraped off her leg this morning. Nature had a way of doing that to you. With arms wrapped around her knees to keep out the cold, she stared into the fog that first greeted her an hour ago. She still couldn’t get her stupid feet to move.
It’d taken four days of grueling trekking to get to this point, in thick jungle, deep mud, and through a waterfall that tried to wash her away to an early death. Now was the last chance to face her greatest test. She needed to push herself out of the comfort zone she knew so well. That she’d lived in for too long.
If only it were that easy.
Ellie’s hair whipped across her neck and her eyes welled with fear. Here she was fulfilling a dream to visit one of the most unique places on earth, but she couldn’t have imagined a worse nightmare. She grabbed a stone and tossed it toward the precipice. It tumbled over the lip and was swallowed by the fog, never to be seen again.
Maybe that’ll be my fate too.
Brushing away a tear, Ellie closed her eyes to visualize her goal: combatting her mortal fear of heights by standing on the very edge of Mount Roraima—1200 feet above the ground. If she made it, what would be her reward? Courage? Happiness? Donuts? Surely just a taste of one would be worth the pain.
Focus, Ellie.
A deep breath of crisp air filled her lungs with inspiration. She stood, bracing against the biting wind. Her nose flared and she took her first tentative steps away from the safety of solid land.
The clouds circled so fast that supernatural figures seemed to appear, like ghosts from a horror movie grabbing at her limbs to pull her into the abyss. They parted for a second and she glimpsed the vista beyond, a valley of emerald rainforest topped by a soaring blue sky. Her heart leaped, teasing her forward.
“C’mon Ellie. You can do it. You have to do it.”
She felt like a child, but knew it was time to be an adult or this entire journey would be for nothing. It was time to grow up, goddammit.
Even if it killed her.