Peak is the title of the novel, the name of the protagonist and also the setting: the peak, that is Mount Everest.

Smith has written a youth novel which starts off rather conventional: Peak is a bored genius climber, gets caught climbing the Woolworth Building in his hometown New York, is sentenced to a mild sentence under the condition that he leave the country the same day. He does leave and travels to China with his father who happens to be a world famous and commercially successful climber. The plan is for him to climb the Mount Everest as youngest person ever.

I am glad to report that not everything remains as perfect and sensationally good as it seems in the beginning. The father has ulterior and not entirely kosher motives (but they are not clearly evil either), Peak is confronted with ambiguous motives, characters and situations more than once and grows on them.

In the end he returns to New York just in time for his and his sisters’ birthday party.