On Snowden Mountain

by Jeri Watts Narrated by Megan Tusing

Overview

Twelve-year-old Ellen learns the quiet strength of family when her mother's deep depression prompts her to ask an estranged aunt for help.

Ellen's mother has struggled with depression before, but not like this. With her father away fighting in World War II and her mother unable to care for them, Ellen's only option is to reach out to her cold, distant aunt Pearl. Soon enough, city-dwelling Ellen and her mother are shepherded off to the countryside to Aunt Pearl's home, a neat little cabin at the base of Snowden Mountain. Adjusting to life in a small town is no easy thing: the school has one room, one of her classmates smells of skunks, and members of the community seem to whisper about Ellen's family. But even as she worries that depression is a family curse to which she'll inevitably succumb, Ellen slowly begins to carve out a space for herself and her mother on Snowden Mountain in this thoughtful, heartfelt middle-grade novel from Jeri Watts.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

06/24/2019

After 12-year-old Ellen’s father leaves to fight in WWII, her mother falls into her deepest depression yet, forcing Ellen to contact her dreaded aunt Pearl. Pearl, her mother’s sister, insists that the family leave Baltimore for her home in Snowden Mountain, Va., where the sisters grew up. There, Ellen, who is accustomed to electricity and fashionable clothes, is faced with an outhouse, oil lamps, and a one-room schoolhouse. At school, Ellen encounters Russell, an outcast who is grade levels behind and smells of skunk. Although she initially looks down on him, and much else about Snowden, Ellen learns that trapping skunks is how Russell supports his family, and when she visits his home to deliver food from the church, she sees how Russell’s father abuses and terrorizes his family. As a friendship grows, Ellen begins to feel that Russell understands her fear that she too will suffer depression, and Russell’s confidence rises when Ellen helps him with his studies. Through a realistically complex character whose growth is organic and well-wrought, Watts (A Piece of Home) offers an unsparing look at the impact of depression, as well as the ways that human connection can change lives. Ages 8–12. (Sept.)

From the Publisher

Deeply affecting, On Snowden Mountain powerfully depicts how positive human connectedness can transform generations, even whole communities. Jeri Watts has built a world, embedded in a mountain and embraced by a river, that does not retreat from adversity, but rather welcomes and transforms suffering into hope and growth.
—Gigi Amateau, author of Chancey: Horses of the Maury River Stables

Through a realistically complex character whose growth is organic and well-wrought, Watts (A Piece of Home) offers an unsparing look at the impact of depression, as well as the ways that human connection can change lives.
—Publishers Weekly

In this beautifully and honestly written work of historical fiction, 12-year-old Ellen Hollingsworth learns about mental illness, abuse, community, and family while navigating a time of war...This book is perfect for someone dealing with any of the issues tackled here, for lovers of historical fiction, and for anyone who simply loves a well-crafted tale. This book should be included in every school library, even high school, and in classroom libraries from grades four and up!
—School Library Connection

Students who have personal experience with depression themselves or with loved ones will appreciate Watt’s subtle depiction and the patience with which it is handled in the story. An important book that has the ability to dispel misunderstandings about mental illness; recommended for all middle grade readers.
—School Library Journal

School Library Journal

11/01/2019

Gr 6–8—Watt's novel gently portrays a family struggling with depression during a time when such things were not well understood or discussed. The novel opens with twelve-year-old Ellen seeking help from an estranged aunt who lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, far away from Baltimore where Ellen and her mother are barely surviving. Ellen's mother has fallen into a deep depression ever since her father left to "beat the hell out of Adolf Hitler." Aunt Pearl whisks them away to Snowden Mountain, much to Ellen's dismay, where Ellen will attend school in a defunct church with other children from the village. There she decides she will not make friends and will not be happy while she harbors fears of depression creeping into her own state of mind, like her mother's. Ellen eventually forms an unlikely friendship with an outcast who is battling his own family demons, and begins to trust the adults offering love and support. Watts's characters are thoughtful and well developed; readers will understand Ellen's feelings as she tries to sort through her family crisis. The villagers in Snowden believe Ellen's mother is frail and sad and do not comprehend the serious effects of depression on the whole family. Students who have personal experience with depression themselves or with loved ones will appreciate Watt's subtle depiction and the patience with which it is handled in the story. VERDICT An important book that has the ability to dispel misunderstandings about mental illness; recommended for all middle grade readers.—Kim Gardner, Fort Worth Country Day School, TX

OCTOBER 2019 - AudioFile

Narrator Megan Tusing's openhearted tone makes 12-year-old Ellen's struggle with her mother's bipolar disorder suitable for middle-grade listeners. When Ellen's father volunteers to fight in WWII, her mother is plunged into a deep depression at his absence, prompting Ellen to appeal to her estranged aunt for help. Early on, a stiffness in Tusing’s voice reflects Ellen's indignation at her aunt’s moving her and her mother from cosmopolitan Baltimore to a Virginia mountain town without electricity. But as Ellen embraces the strength of her hardworking aunt and befriends an outcast boy, Tusing's delivery becomes more earnest. She serves the story well by not overdoing it with Southern accents in favor of folksy character voices that suggest the 1941 setting. S.T.C. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2019-06-10
When her mother falls into a catatonic depression, 12-year-old Ellen finds herself whisked from lively Baltimore to an obscure Blue Ridge mountain.

It's 1942, and Ellen's daddy is off fighting in the war and Mama's hit one of her sad spells. Unable to cope, Ellen summons Mama's forbidding spinster sister, Pearl, who takes them both back to Virginia to live with her. There, Aunt Pearl tends to Mama while Ellen attends a one-room schoolhouse. One boy, a nearly illiterate 15-year-old named Russell, rarely comes to school, and when he does he smells strongly of the skunks he traps. When Aunt Pearl sends Ellen to Russell's house with food, she meets Russell's abused mother, a childhood friend of her mother's, and his abusive father. An odd friendship develops, in which Russell shows Ellen some of the beauties of the mountain forest, and she tutors him in reading and math. Meanwhile, Russell's mother tries to help Ellen's mother heal. Told from Ellen's first-person point of view, the novel has good sentence-level writing but falls short in two key points. Ellen often seems an observer in her own story, describing what happens to her but never really influencing the action. (Even her initial call for help happens offstage.) Also, the narrative arcs of the characters fail to satisfy—it's hard to see what each person wants or gains. The age difference between Russell and Ellen may cause some readers to find the relationship a bit creepy. The novel adheres to a white default.

Smoothly written but not cohesive or memorable. (Historical fiction. 8-12)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173839527
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	09/10/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged
Age Range:	8 - 11 Years

Read an Excerpt

Aunt Pearl was punching our doorbell and calling out, “Open this door.”
For a moment, I saw a spark in Mama’s eyes. The spark she’d lost since my father joined up to go “beat the tar out of Adolf Hitler.”
I felt a spark too —​a spark of fear. Aunt Pearl had visited us once before, and she’d been quite a force to reckon with —​I questioned the desperation that had driven me to ask her for help. But as I walked to the door, I looked back at my mother, a whisper of herself, both physically and emotionally, and I knew that it had been the right thing to do.
Besides, I didn’t have any other choice. At twelve years old, what was I going to do? I’d burned every pot and pan in our home, I’d used up every bit of food from the grocery and they wouldn’t deliver any more on credit, and I had no other adults to turn to. I had no one and nowhere to go for help but to a family member I had met just once —​a family member my father didn’t like much and whom my mother had run away from as soon as she could. It seemed when my father left for war, my mother left too.
I pushed my fear down and opened the door.
Aunt Pearl bustled right in. She was tall and bulky, just as I remembered, wearing some hideous dress of indistinguishable style. (My mother raised me to place great store in fashion. It obviously mattered little to Aunt Pearl.) She stood before Mama and took her pulse. I suppose that’s what she did, because she picked up Mama’s thin wrist with her beefy hand and briefly looked at the sensible wristwatch she wore.
“We will go to Snowden,” she said.
I blinked and found my voice. “No.” I swallowed. “I mean, actually, I thought you could help here.”
She continued to hold Mama’s wrist. She said nothing but looked up at me in disdain. I’d remembered that look —​and the pinched nose that went with it —​ ​correctly.
I went on babbling. “I have school. My books.”
Aunt Pearl pulled Mama out of her chair, pushed her up the stairs, and began to pack my mother’s clothes. The woman who was my aunt spoke to us both. “We will go home. To Snowden.”
And so, in early September 1942, we did.
 
Chapter One
The journey took a lifetime, or at least it seemed that way. My world had just collapsed.
I’d expected Aunt Pearl to help me there, in Baltimore. I’d expected . . . Oh, I’d expected I don’t know what. I had had time to prepare for my father leaving. He told my mother and me he was planning to volunteer; he showed us his uniform; we had parties in the neighborhood; he showed me newspaper articles about Hitler and the WAR (he always spoke of it as if it were in all capital letters).
With Aunt Pearl, our departure was a whirl; things moved fast, slow, then fast again. I found myself making comparisons about things that mattered little but would have mattered a great deal to my mother if she’d been acting like my mother anymore. But she wasn’t.
We caught a train to Lexington, Virginia, a nothing of a town compared to Baltimore. We spent the night there, in the most uncomfortable bed, which we all three shared, a difficult task, since Aunt Pearl took up more than her share. That bed smelled funny too, like old soap. I wasn’t allowed any bedtime routines before going to sleep, as Aunt Pearl immediately turned off the light. I understood Mama and Aunt Pearl were probably tired, especially since Mama looked tired all the time, but I wished I could have read for a little while. Too bad I had no books.
As I waited for sleep on that lumpy mattress, trapped between the stranger my mother had become and the stranger who was my aunt, I tried to comfort myself by thinking of good memories; instead, I fought with the memories of the past few months.
I thought of my shoe salesman father, who didn’t have to go to war, as it said in the letter I’d found squirreled in the depths of the closet. The letter told him that as the “sole provider of a minor and an unhealthy dependent,” he would not be expected to serve.
Yet he’d volunteered to go, proud to serve in his sharply creased private’s uniform. Gone after a whirlwind of parties and send​­offs for “my hero,” as Mama called him. I wondered if that “unhealthy dependent” meant Mama, because she had had to go away for a few days the previous year for some “fresh air,” days when I’d stayed with my friend Peggy and her family.
When Mama returned, nobody, not even Peggy, would jump rope or play tag or jacks with me anymore.
That’s when Mama told me books could be my best friends. She wouldn’t let me read Nancy Drew or Lad: A Dog. She wanted me to read important books that made me look smart. I carried them around to make her happy, but I didn’t even understand the first pages. Still, holding them made me feel close to her.
Finally, I felt myself drifting off to sleep in that crowded bed, and I surrendered to it.
In the morning, we learned that the train track at Balcony Downs had been washed out by mud. Aunt Pearl wasn’t willing to wait for the repairs.
“Perhaps you could borrow a car?” I asked.
Aunt Pearl looked at me with a stone face. “Can’t drive a car. Besides, you’d get sick. I get sick in cars on that mountain, and I’ve been living around here forever.” She tapped her lips with her right index finger, then nodded. “We’ll go by river.”

Videos