Silvia Vasquez-Lavado is a truly impressive individual: She’s a philanthropist who’s worked in Silicon Valley’s tech industry, and she’s one of the few women to have climbed all Seven Summits, the Earth’s highest mountain peaks. But as her immersive, inspiring memoir, In the Shadow of the Mountain: A Memoir of Courage (15.5 hours), makes clear, her accomplished resume only hints at her remarkable story. Scenes from her life—including her childhood in Peru, her sexual abuse by a trusted adult and her later estrangement from her mother following her coming out as a lesbian—are interspersed with scenes from a climb on Mount Everest, where she’s accompanied by fellow sexual violence survivors who, like the author, have found healing and empowerment through physical challenges.
Through her narration, Vasquez-Lavado, whose first language is Spanish, conveys a lifetime of warmth, humor and steely determination.
