Book excerpt: The View Upon the Mountain chronicles the path of a young boy as he journeys up a legendary mountain, only to realize the value of all that he has left behind. Through his Great Pilgrimage, he explores what happens when you achieve a goal that was never really yours, wrestles with the paradox of making love stay, and ultimately learns how to climb back down. A tale of love, loss, forgiveness, and the acceptance of one's fate, The View Upon the Mountain holds up a mirror to our own deepest selves, daring us to look away. A spiritual successor to such classic tales as Hesse's Siddhartha and Coelho's The Alchemist, The View Upon the Mountain provides a refreshing draught of goodness to the world-weary reader, enriching our hearts so that we may bravely embark on our own Great Pilgrimages. Like life itself, it is a story that fluctuates between buoyancy and weight, earnestness and cynicism, examining our darker side no less rigorously than our light. Admirers of plot symmetry, archetypes, and Jungian theory will be especially taken by this well-constructed tale, diamond-like in its multifaceted perfection. By juxtaposing one character's rock bottom with another's greatest ecstasy, Laemmle accentuates both the nuance and irony of life itself. A coming-of-age story to be enjoyed by children and adults alike, The View Upon the Mountain weaves aspects of fantasy, romance, adventure, and myth to create a vibrantly original tale that nevertheless reads like our most familiar bedtime stories, so adroitly does it cut directly to the heart of what makes us human. An epic portrayal of the eternal struggle between man and self that refuses to offer an easy way out, the reader must identify as both hero and villain intertwined, that frustrating and confounding tangle of parts that can only be named: the individual. Stuck in a pit of his own digging, Laemmle wrote this novella as a rope with which to pull himself free. Whether needing to revive one's courage, accept one's imperfections, forgive oneself for past mistakes, or turn regret into a blessing, every human has something to gain by reading this novella, if only they are willing to shed the dead weight that has been holding them back.