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IT'S NOTHING TO A MOUNTAIN by Sid Hite

IT'S NOTHING TO A MOUNTAIN

by Sid Hite

Pub Date: May 1st, 1994
ISBN: 0-8050-2769-6
Publisher: Henry Holt

The author of Dither Farm (1992) spins another offbeat adventure, enacted by less extraordinary but still vibrant characters. In early 1969, after their parents plunge in a car to a fiery death, grieving Lisette, 13, and Riley, 12, join their grandparents at the Sutter homestead in Virginia's Blue Ridge. Lisette finds comfort in an elderly neighbor woman and in a message of love inscribed on her mother's pendant; Riley befriends Thorpe, a 15-year-old hiding in the wilderness while his mother's in jail for shooting his abusive stepfather in the knees. Since Thorpe has sworn him to secrecy, Riley's disappearances to aid him land him in trouble, with near-tragic results. As the title suggests, Hite sets the events, harrowing to those concerned, in broad perspective by beginning with a synopsis of the region's geology and Sutter family history; torrential floods in the wake of tropical storm Camille, too, play a dramatic role in the taut climax. The author's quirky, pungent style propels a story that's less comic than Dither Farm but more tightly knit, and with a wealth of memorable scenes; the expected denoument is achieved by a gratifyingly intricate route. Grand entertainment. (Fiction. 11+)