In 1924, when asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, George Leigh Mallory coined the celebrated phrase “Because it’s there.” But earlier in the year, when faced with the same question from a group of distinguished adventurers at New York City’s famed Explorers Club, Percy Brackett Elliott coined the not-so-celebrated phrase, “Because horsey horsey, he don’t stop/ He done let his feet go clipetty-clop.” He then he broke into an ambitious gallop, tripped, banged his head on the podium, and fell into a coma. His Everest attempt would be delayed a full year, until surgeons could devise a way to plug the gaping hole in his noggin, eventually sealing it with a handful of abandoned athletic socks and a quart of latex primer (linen white). It was never quite clear whether or not he was completely out of his coma before he made his attempted climb.

In those days the borders were closed, and unless you had the patience to file the proper paperwork, you were denied access to the mountain. Uncle Percy had no such patience. Instead, he resolved to fly to Everest and climb up from wherever he crash-landed. He built himself a plane based on instructions from a toy model (actually of a boat) and christened her Ever Rest. The aircraft was the first of its kind ever to be constructed entirely out of yeast paste and horsehair—the only building materials available at the time, due to the silica famine of 1923 (so no fiberglass). But, oh, was she a sight to behold! On December 1, 1924, he pushed the single-engine biplane out on to the muddy runway behind the Elliott barn in Brooklyn Heights, waved good-bye to the curious onlookers, and then went back inside. Apparently he had lost interest in the whole adventure, and it would take another week before the idea appealed to him again.

And so, on December 8, 1924, armed with only a fingernail clipper, some meat lozenges, and a jar of petroleum jelly, Percy Brackett Elliott took off from Love Field in Brooklyn Heights and headed east toward the Himalayas. And then on December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. (That has nothing to do with this story, but I thought it was worth remembering here, as I’m writing this on Veterans Day.)

I never met my great-uncle Percy, and there are those, like my grandparents, who insist that he was completely out of his mind. But from the time I was a child I’ve felt a strong kinship with the man, especially since my grandparents often remarked on how much I reminded them of him. (Apparently we both liked to stick beans up our noses.)

In 1999 an expedition to retrace Mallory’s efforts discovered his perfectly preserved body on a windswept cap sheaf, 28,000 feet up the south approach to the summit. He was lying face down just below the Hillary Tit. He had broken his right leg and his left arm, and all the vertebrae in his lower back were crushed. The assumption was that he had choked on a frozen hunk of bangers and mash.

But what about Uncle Percy? Had he made it? Was he the first person to stand on the roof of the world and shout out at the top of his lungs “Hey, all you mo-fos, you can kiss my big white ass!” (or whatever would have been appropriate back in 1924)? Sadly, Percy never returned home to tell his tale, and no climber has ever come across a single shred of evidence proving that the Elliott/Everest expedition even existed. In fact, some conspiracy theorists claim that my great-uncle wasn’t even in the Himalayas in the winter of 1924, but was in Washington, DC, trying to secure a patent from the war department for his inflatable underpants.

Alas, my great-uncle’s name faded into obscurity. That is, until about a year ago, when I received an anonymous package in the mail. Assuming that it was either a dirty bomb or live Maine lobsters, I let it soak in warm, soapy water for a week before opening it. When I finally unwrapped its contents my life changed forever. Pushing aside the putrid lobsters, I discovered my great-uncle Percy’s diary! Here was the whole sordid, seedy (and extremely soggy) detailed chronicle of the 1924 Elliott Mount Everest expedition— at least up to the point where it abruptly ended with the curious entry:

Farewell all. I leave now for afternoon tea with the jub jub bird and nasty old Mr. Bandersnatch.

At last, now there was evidence!

The mysterious diary could not have surfaced at a better moment in my life. My brief marriage to famed fashion designer Vera Wang had ended abruptly in an ugly custody battle over my collection of vintage 1980s Girbaud pants, and my one-man show as Ethel Merman had just closed Off Broadway due to numerous complaints by the board of health.

With the overwhelming success of my first book (The Shroud of the Thwacker, Miramax, $22.95), my next book was highly anticipated, and yet I had been frittering away my days by submitting falsified documents signed “Yours truly, Peter Stuyvesant” to the New York Historical Society and writing made-up participatory journalistic articles in the vein of the late, great George Plimpton—mostly for my own amusement, but for some legitimate ink-testing laboratories as well. After the diary’s arrival, however, the prospect of writing a book about climbing Mount Everest loomed in my imagination as a participatory journalistic adventure that I might actually participate in.

I would retrace my great-uncle Percy’s expedition, prove that he summitted the mountain before anyone else, and solve the mystery surrounding his disappearance! Hopefully, I would find his perfectly preserved frozen body somewhere up in the Himalayas and return it home for a proper Elliott burial—complete with marching bands, dancing dogs, and bearded ladies (they’re my second cousins—the dogs, that is).

Those were my reasons—simple enough, I thought—but in reality far more complex than I could ever imagine.