Forget Me Not: A Memoir

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While those on the outside may never understand this lifestyle, Jennifer shows what it means to love someone as they are, although she certainly wasn't always happy that he frequently spent months away from home. Jennifer Lowe-Anker has combined the landscapes, animals and people of her native Montana with a unique approach to painting.

I became interested in their story when I saw documentaries about Lowe and Conrad Anker (Lowe's best friend). She has been connected with so many talented individuals throughout her life, yet the one constant is Jenny herself. I stumbled across it because I am such a huge Jon Krakaur fan, and found that he had contributed to the Forward.

The first few chapters of this book are steeped in the early lives of Alex and Jennifer, whose life together wasn't always smooth. There are parts of this book where you will feel the loneliness Jen feels as well as the times where you will smile along with the charactors in the story. Then eventually it grows into something blazing, which fixated me, and I was unable to step away from it. Her love of nature, her fierce sense of freedom, the courage with which she moves through whatever life throws at her - what an amazing woman!

I think this background knowledge really helped me appreciate this book, and would recommend any other reader do the same. Alex Lowe death was caused by an Avalanche, a dream that his wife Jen had had a day before the trip. Jennifer Lowe-Anker has also inherited the pioneer strain, and there is a clarity, a lucidity, sometimes even a toughness to her writing that gives this book the balance it needs.However this great love story came to a quick end when Alex was killed in an avalanche that his best friend survived.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. In moving in with Jennifer, as a father figure who had survived the avalanche that killed the boy's father, Conrad would be shouldering the responsibility of a lifetime. Living in the west, loving the mountains and having been in so many places where this book takes you, I loved this book.There are lessons to be learned in Forget Me Not that climbers and non-climbers alike won’t easily forget. The title is particularly apt due to the author's love of that flower, and her husband's often gifting her with them, even to giving her a ring that resembled a forget me not. While I can observe the sequence of events and reflect on it myself (and it’s not inherently bad to make a reader work), the narration didn’t give me the author’s thoughts on any of this. Rather than focusing on climbing, there was jealousy and constant tension: who was getting the most photos of themselves posted, who was getting credit for leading or summitting.