Mountain Madness: Found and Lost in the Peaks of America and Japan (Crux: The Georgia Series in Literary Nonfiction)

Clinton Crockett Peters traces an unlikely arc across two continents: from the flat evangelical landscapes of West Texas to the vertiginous peaks of Japan's Chichibu Mountains, where a near-fatal injury forces a reckoning with obsession, identity, and what we ask of wild places. Structured around three years spent in Kosuge Village, a remote mountain community in central Japan, this essay collection moves fluidly between memoir and cultural reflection, asking how terrain shapes the people who seek it out, and what remains when the mountains take something back.

Adam Verner brings a measured, contemplative quality to Peters' prose that suits the book's introspective register. His pacing resists urgency, letting the meditative passages breathe while sharpening the moments of physical danger and emotional rupture. At just over six hours, the runtime feels calibrated rather than compressed. The combination of Peters' lyrical voice and Verner's steady delivery makes the listening experience feel less like a performance and more like a long conversation in difficult terrain.