When twelve-year-old Ellie and her family lose livelihood and move to a mountain cabin in 1934, she quickly learns to be an outdoors woman and, when needed, a healer. - (Baker & Taylor)

Losing her home in the aftermath of the stock market crash of 1929, Ellie moves with her family to a new home in an unforgiving mountain terrain where she seeks a cure to restore her injured father to health. By the Newbery Honor-winning author of Wolf Hollow. Simultaneous eBook. - (Baker & Taylor)

? “Historical fiction at its finest.” –The Horn Book

“There has never been a better time to read about healing, of both the body and the heart.” –The New York Times Book Review

Echo Mountain is an acclaimed best book of 2020! 
An NPR Best Book of the Year • A Horn Book Fanfare Selection • A Kirkus Best Book of the Year • A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year • A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year • A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year

After losing almost everything in the Great Depression, Ellie’s family is forced to leave their home in town and start over in the untamed wilderness of nearby Echo Mountain. Ellie has found a welcome freedom, and a love of the natural world, in her new life on the mountain. But there is little joy after a terrible accident leaves her father in a coma. An accident unfairly blamed on Ellie.

Ellie is a girl who takes matters into her own hands, and determined to help her father she will make her way to the top of the mountain in search of the healing secrets of a woman known only as “the hag.” But the hag, and the mountain, still have many untold stories left to reveal.
 
Historical fiction at its finest, Echo Mountain is celebration of finding your own path and becoming your truest self. Lauren Wolk, the Newbery Honor– and Scott O'Dell Award–winning author of Wolf Hollow and Beyond the Bright Sea, weaves a stunning tale of resilience, persistence, and friendship across three generations of families.

“Soothing and exquisitely written.” –People

“This is a book that will soothe readers like a healing balm.” –The Wall Street Journal

“Brilliant.” –Lynda Mullaly Hunt, bestselling author of Fish in a Tree - (Penguin Putnam)

' “Historical fiction at its finest.” –The Horn Book

“There has never been a better time to read about healing, of both the body and the heart.” –The New York Times Book Review

Echo Mountain is an acclaimed best book of 2020! 
An NPR Best Book of the Year • A Horn Book Fanfare Selection • A Kirkus Best Book of the Year • A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year • A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year • A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year

After losing almost everything in the Great Depression, Ellie’s family is forced to leave their home in town and start over in the untamed wilderness of nearby Echo Mountain. Ellie has found a welcome freedom, and a love of the natural world, in her new life on the mountain. But there is little joy after a terrible accident leaves her father in a coma. An accident unfairly blamed on Ellie.

Ellie is a girl who takes matters into her own hands, and determined to help her father she will make her way to the top of the mountain in search of the healing secrets of a woman known only as “the hag.” But the hag, and the mountain, still have many untold stories left to reveal.
 
Historical fiction at its finest, Echo Mountain is celebration of finding your own path and becoming your truest self. Lauren Wolk, the Newbery Honor– and Scott O'Dell Award–winning author of Wolf Hollow and Beyond the Bright Sea, weaves a stunning tale of resilience, persistence, and friendship across three generations of families.

“Soothing and exquisitely written.” –People

“This is a book that will soothe readers like a healing balm.” –The Wall Street Journal

“Brilliant.” –Lynda Mullaly Hunt, bestselling author of Fish in a Tree - (Penguin Putnam)

Lauren Wolk is an award-winning poet, artist, and author of the adult novel Those Who Favor Fire, the Newbery Honor-winning novel Wolf Hollow, and the Scott O'Dell Award-winning Beyond the Bright Sea. She was born in Baltimore and has since lived in California, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Canada, and Ohio. She now lives with her family on Cape Cod. - (Penguin Putnam)

Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* It is a magical thing to step into a world created by Wolk (Beyond the Bright Sea, 2017), even without any fantastic enchantment. In this instance, the story of Ellie and her family is a diamond glinting in the rough of the Great Depression, when poverty drives them from town to a more wild existence on a mountainside. Though her mother and older sister yearn to return to civilized life, Ellie thrives in this new environment. But they all must muster different brands of courage when an accident leaves Ellie's father in a coma. Though only 12, Ellie steps up to do many of the tasks, such as hunting and fishing, that had been her father's, all the while remaining determined to jar him back awake by any means possible. Her spirit and empathy eventually lead her far up the mountain to the cabin of Cate, aka the local hag, where Ellie discovers that Cate is herself ill with a festering wound. Compelled to help Cate as much as her father, Ellie learns and accomplishes more than she knew was possible. Complex and fiercely loving, Ellie is a girl any reader would be proud to have as a friend. Woven with music, puppies, and healing, Wolk's beautiful storytelling turns this historical tale of family and survival into a captivating saga. Grades 4-8. Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.

Horn Book Guide Reviews

Since the Great Depression forced twelve-year-old Ellie's family to move from town up to Echo Mountain, she hasn't known how to interact with her mother and older sister; they miss their former life and blame her for the tree-felling accident that has left her father in a coma. Ellie doesn't know how to wake him up, though she keenly desires it, but there's a lot she does know: how tohunt and trap and fish and harvest as if she were born to it. Remembering her father's advice -- the things we need to learn to do, we learn to do by doing -- she takes it upon herself to find the answers to her problems, including persistent attempts to rouse her father using unconventional methods (dousing him with cold water, stinging him with bees). Meeting the injured Miss Cate, an elderly mountain woman, and Larkin, a solitary boy with a talent for wood carving, eventually helps Ellie figure out how to heal her broken family. Wolk's latest novel (Wolf Hollow, rev. 7/16; Beyond the Bright Sea, rev. 7/17) immerses readers in its 1934 Maine woods setting, folding myriad details about living off the land into Ellie's captivating and complex first-person narration. Free-spirited Ellie's affinity for her natural surroundings and her empathic connection with animals show an appreciation for the interconnectedness of life, as do several of the (well-earned) plot revelations. Wolk's poetic prose and enticing foreshadowing warrant savoring as they carry the reader through the narrative, which gracefully unfolds over brief, steadily paced chapters. Exemplary historical fiction. Copyright 2021 Horn Book Guide Reviews.

Horn Book Magazine Reviews

Since the Great Depression forced twelve-year-old Ellie's family to move from town up to Echo Mountain, she hasn't known how to interact with her mother and older sister; they miss their former life and blame her for the tree-felling accident that has left her father in a coma. Ellie doesn't know how to wake him up, though she keenly desires it, but there's a lot she does know: how to "hunt and trap and fish and harvest" as if she were born to it. Remembering her father's advice -- "the things we need to learn to do, we learn to do by doing" -- she takes it upon herself to find the answers to her problems, including persistent attempts to rouse her father using unconventional methods (dousing him with cold water, stinging him with bees). Meeting the injured Miss Cate, an elderly mountain woman, and Larkin, a solitary boy with a talent for wood carving, eventually helps Ellie figure out how to heal her broken family. Wolk's latest novel (Wolf Hollow, rev. 7/16; Beyond the Bright Sea, rev. 7/17) immerses readers in its 1934 Maine woods setting, folding myriad details about living off the land into Ellie's captivating and complex first-person narration. Free-spirited Ellie's affinity for her natural surroundings and her empathic connection with animals show an appreciation for the interconnectedness of life, as do several of the (well-earned) plot revelations. Wolk's poetic prose and enticing foreshadowing warrant savoring as they carry the reader through the narrative, which gracefully unfolds over brief, steadily paced chapters. Exemplary historical fiction. Cynthia K. Ritter July/August 2020 p.145 Copyright 2020 Horn Book Magazine Reviews.

Kirkus Reviews

After losing almost everything in the Great Depression, Ellie's family moves to the Maine woods on Echo Mountain to start a farm—then tragedy strikes. Not long after getting them established in their new life, Ellie's father is struck on the head by a falling tree and lapses into a monthslong coma, his recovery unlikely. Never feeling threatened by the wilderness the way her mother and older sister, Esther, do, Ellie takes over many of her beloved father's chores, finding comfort and confidence in the forest. She's fully mindful of her place in the natural world and her impact on the plants and animals she shares it with. After she becomes determined to use the resources of the woods, however novel and imaginative the application, to save her father, conflict with her mother and Esther increases sharply. Led by a dog, Ellie discovers elderly Cate—called "hag" and shunned as a witch—badly injured, living alone in a cabin on the mountaintop. Cate fully understands the 12-year-old's slightly supernatural sense. Cate's grandson, Larkin, Ellie's age, flits in and out of the tale before finally claiming his place in t his magnificently related story of the wide arc of responsibility, acceptance, and, ultimately, connectedness. Carefully paced and told in lyrical prose, characters—all default white—are given plenty of time and room to develop against a well-realized, timeless setting. A luscious, shivery delight. (Historical fiction. 10-14) Copyright Kirkus 2020 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly Reviews

A girl realizes her standout gifts as a healer in this exquisitely layered historical novel set in Depression-era Maine. After the financial crash forces a tight-knit family of five to move from town to build a cabin on Echo Mountain, a tree-felling accident puts 12-year-old narrator Ellie's father into a coma. The family's struggle to survive intensifies, made worse by fears about whether their beloved father—a tailor turned woodsman who, like Ellie, loves the wild—will ever awaken. Complex family dynamics loom large amid day-to-day matters: Ellie's mother and sister long for their former life and blame Ellie for her father's state; Ellie, who discovers a gift for healing, further upsets them by trying to startle her father awake. When a dog leads Ellie to "the hag," a woman who knows about cures and is herself suffering, the girl lends a hand, resulting in further tensions, this time within the interconnected mountain community. Via strongly sketched cabin-life cadences and memorable, empathic characterizations—including, perhaps most vividly, of the wilderness itself—Newbery Honoree Wolk (Wolf Hollow) builds a powerful, well-paced portrait of interconnectedness, work and learning, and strength in a time of crisis. Ages 10–up. (Apr.)

School Library Journal Reviews

Gr 4 Up—The Great Depression took many things from Ellie's family–her parent's jobs, their house, and their comfortable lives. They moved to property on Echo Mountain to start over and rebuild. And what the Great Depression didn't take, the mountain did. Ellie lost the family that she once knew. Her mother and her sister, Esther, weren't meant for life on the mountains, they said. And her father has spent the last several months in a coma due to an accident from a felled tree. Ellie carries the emotional burden of taking the blame for it and the physical burden of handling the manual tasks in his absence. But while the mountain takes, it also gives–carved trinkets, plants for healing, and friendships found in unexpected places. Wolk crafts an uplifting story of resilience and determination during a time when morale is incredibly low. She illustrates how people are multifaceted, and not always what they seem. In this novel, family can take many forms—the one you're born into, and the one that finds you when and where you least expect it. The narrative does contain subtle but direct details involving maggots, blood, and wounds that will intrigue the most reluctant of readers but may be too much for those with a weak stomach. VERDICT A heartfelt read and recommended first purchase for all collections. You can tell readers that the dog doesn't die at the end.—Alicia Kalan, The Northwest School, Seattle