Letters from Chamonix: Stories and a Novella. By David Stevenson. Imaginary Mountain Surveyors (Canada), 2014. 230 pages. Paperback, $24.95.

Editor's note: Longtime AAJ books editor David Stevenson’s collection of short fiction won the Banff Mountain Book Award for Fiction and Poetry in 2014. The following is quoted from remarks by Anik See, Banff juror, with permission.

In Letters from Chamonix, Stevenson captures the spirit and passion of climbing without the cliché, jargon and often predictable plots and characters. Each short story is as diverse in characters and challenges as each climb is from the next. Combining authentic scenes and plots with all of the elements that make good stories, the reader is treated to several points of view of what it’s like to be a climber—and the never-ending array of psychological states climbers endure to do the thing they love—while also including the experience of non-climbers who are left behind by tragedy. With this collection, Stevenson has made it clear that he is a man as dedicated to the craft of writing as he is to climbing. A boon for mountain fiction.