On his 53rd birthday, Kevin Sessums woke up in his L.A. hotel room wondering how he would get through his scheduled interview with Hugh Jackman. For years, he had interviewed the bright lights: Madonna, Courtney Love, Jessica Lange, and all the other usual suspects; but, Kevin knew that his rapidly unraveling life was as shallow as the hotel's hip furniture and he was hanging on by his fingertips. In I Left It on the Mountain, Sessums chronicles his early days in NY as an actor, his years working for Andy Warhol at Interview and Tina Brown at Vanity Fair, countless nights of anonymous sex, his HIV Positive diagnosis and his descent into addiction. It's also the chronicle of one man's spiritual redemption found while climbing to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostelo and trudging across the cold, lonely winter beaches of Provincetown. Peopled with the famous like Daniel Radcliffe and Diane Sawyer as well as anonymous companions corporeal and otherwise whom he met while mountain climbing and hiking, I Left It on the Mountain is the story of one man's fall and rebirth, the next moving chapter in Kevin Sessums' extraordinary life that takes him from the high to the low and back again. For readers who loved Mississippi Sissy and want to know what happened to that tenacious little boy with the baseball mitt, I Left It On the Mountain is the sometimes very dark, but ultimately hopeful answer.
"With the most acute eye, an ear for the telling phrase, and a brand of compassion seldom encountered in the world of celebrity journalism, Kevin Sessums takes us along on a rare journey--to the places few people besides the famous and those who follow them get to go. through the pages of deeply engaging new book, I got to know Madonna and Jessica Lange, and a long list of others. The most likable among them, Kevin Sessums himself. In a world of tinsel, he reveals himself to be that rare thing: a journalist with a heart."
Joyce Maynard, author of Labor Day, The Usual Rules, The Good Daughters and others
"A gentleman-pilgram's tale of quiet fortitude and strength on the long path to something akin to wisdom. Kevin Sessums matches each instance of self-debasement with a quiet and forgiving wonderment at how his skies got so dark. He finds the answers in small acts of private internal courage in his exile in Provincetown, where he meets himself unblinkingly but with great kindness. The kindness Kevin has always showed others, he finally proffers to himself. A quietly stunning book as intimate as a story told over a winter's night in a quiet beach town, after everyone has gone home."
Jon Robin Baitz
"Kevin Sessums' I Left It On The Mountain is irresistible--in turn, scandalous, hysterical, poignant, and, finally, triumphant."
