Climbing Lessons

Tim Bascom's collection opens with a scene from his own childhood: his father, Doc, attempts to demonstrate how to climb a tall sycamore for his young sons and falls twelve feet onto his back. Once he recovers his breath, he wryly declares that this is how it is done. The moment captures the pattern of a father leading, stumbling, and rising to try again.

The book gathers forty short, witty and sometimes tender pieces that trace the bond between fathers and sons and how it shifts over the years. When Bascom becomes a father himself, his adoring toddlers gradually grow into teenagers who have little interest in their dad's heroics. He has to come to terms with a less heroic, imperfect version of himself, much as his own father once did.

The stories are brief and connected, so they read as a single arc. They suggest that affection can survive the harder stretches of growing up and draw fathers and sons closer as they work through the most difficult parts of the journey together.