Just Jennifer

Race Across the Sky by Derek Sherman (Plume, August 2013)

Caleb and Shane Oberest gained their love of running from their father as children.  As young adults, they initially took similar paths as Caleb took a consulting career on the East Coast and Shane a sales job with a pharmaceutical on the West Coast.  Their paths diverge when Caleb becomes obsessed with ultramarathoning, running over one hundred miles at a time,  leaving his job and severing all ties with his family to live in a cult-like situation near Boulder.  Caleb subjects a strict regime each day, running for hours, eating only twice a day and not having a relationship with any member of the club, something he has no trouble doing until June and her infant daughter Lily arrive, June a marathoner herself, Lily a very sick child whom June is hoping will benefit from some of the holistic practices professed by the leader of the house, Mack.  When Caleb realizes that Lily will die unless she gets more help and faster than Mack is able to provide, he reaches out to his brother Shane who has begun his own change in lifestyles as he awaits the birth of his first child and leaves his sales job for a division director in the biotechnology company in which his wife works.  Shane’s initial reaction is to get Caleb out of the house at any cost, but when he realizes his brother will not leave without assurances that Lily will get the help she needs, he appeals to the doctors in the labs at his new company hoping for a miracle that will not only save Lily, but bring his brother home.  Caleb and his housemates are preparing for the penultimate marathon, one held in Yosemite on a course where men have died in the past, one that Mack says Caleb must participate in if he hopes to bring Lily to Shane to search for an alternate cure; neither can image at what cost each of these men will attempt to reach their goals and what will the impact be on their lives and families.  With no holds barred, Sherman details the effects of such physical strains on the body and mind, in addition to the cult mentality to which Caleb has succumbed.  Even as different as the brothers’ lives have become, there are certain parallels drawn as each searches for where they belong in the universe and in the smaller microcosm each inhabits.  Disturbing at times, Sherman’s narrative is propelled forward, making stops at aid stations along the way, each brother being paced by someone through the difficult times much the way Caleb’s housemates care for each other, trying to reach a summit that may not have been the original goal.