Echo Mountain

you know how it feels when the sun hits you in the right spot? that's how this book felt.

Ellie and her parents and sister and brother have left the town to live on Echo Mountain. It's the time of the Great Depression and everyone is struggling. Ellie and her father adapt well to life on the mountain but Ellie's mother and sister long for their old lives back in town. A terrible accident happens and everything changes again, and now Ellie must learn by doing how to put her healing gifts to work to help others.

This is a beautiful story of growth and change, of love and caring, of hurt and healing. The writing is poetical and fresh. I feel oddly reenergized after reading this story.

Some of my favorite quotes from the book:

“The things we need to learn to do, we learn to do by doing.”

“There aren't many hurts that a sky meadow full of clean white blossoms can't make at least a little better.”

“Maybe she'll wake up soon and come back to what she used to be...or what she'll be next.”


“I wish you could have been with me these past weeks,”I whispered.“To watch what happened.”Though much of it would have been different, had he been well.My father smiled at me, his eyes full of sun in the shadowy room. “I see it all very clearly,” he said. “I see it in every bit of the girl you've become.”

Great for readers who enjoy the possibly-tedious details of old-timey life! (I am one of those readers!) Some of the medical details might be a bit much for the squeamish! (I am the squeamish!) For a book that started with such big thorny feelings I did feel like it resolved a bit too neatly but EH we all could use more happy endings.