It’s 1986 and 22 year old Miriam (aka Mimi) Zieman, a medical school applicant, received a letter from Robert Anderson, an American mountaineer whom she had met while trekking in Nepal a few years earlier.  Anderson made her an audacious offer:  “Please join our expedition which will be the first to ascend to Everest’s summit from the East Face, entering from Tibet and climbing unaided by guides and without using oxygen.  You will be our expedition doctor.”  Zieman, the child of an Israeli mother and a Holocaust survivor father, had a history of taking risks and seeking adventure.  From her days as an accomplished dancer to her trekking around Nepal on her own, she also liked to push herself and felt the need to be on the edge.  She accepted.

Zieman  spent the next three years learning everything she could about the medical situations she might face on Everest—frostbite, broken bones, and altitude sickness including high altitude pulmonary and cerebral edema either of which could prove fatal.  Despite the fact that at the time of the expedition she had only completed two years of medical school, she was the only medical professional for the four man climbing team and the 20 person base camp support crew.

The second part of this memoir describes the almost unimaginable challenges facing the expedition, from avalanches and glacial crevasses to alternating thaws and minus 20 degree weather, from striking Tibetan porters to the challenges of high altitude hypoxia.  Spoiler alert coming up:  the expedition succeeds but at a price.  One of the four climbers had to return to base camp because of bloody coughing and exhaustion and two others were unable to complete the final short leg to the summit, but one did—SUCCESS.  The cost of this success was significant in lost fingers and toes as frostbite and hypothermia nearly killed the three climbers who managed to get back to camp after a week in the Death Zone.

Zieman tells a gripping story with compassion, wit, and and an eye for the telling detail.  The title of the book and the photo on its cover, show her using her ballet and tap skills, dancing with an umbrella on a ridge with Everest in the background.  This gritty and courageous young woman went on to raise a family and work as an obstetrician for twenty years in Atlanta before finding the time and courage to recount this tale.  It’s one well worth reading.