Books with title Migi on the Mountain

"Miss Stafford writes with brilliance. Scene after scene is told with unforgettable care and tenuous entanglements are treated with wise subtlety. She creates a splendid sense of time, of the unending afternoons of youth, and of the actual color of noon and of night. Refinement of evil, denial of drama only make the underlying truth more terrible." --Saturday Review "Hard to match . . . for subtlety and understanding. . . written wittily, lucidly, and with great respect for the resources of the language. "--New Yorker Coming of age in pre-World War II California and Colorado brings tragedy to Molly and Ralph Fawcett in Jean Stafford's classic semi-autobiographical novel, first published in 1947. Torn between their mother's world of genteel respectability and their grandfather's and uncle's world of cowboy masculinity, neither Molly nor Ralph can find an acceptable adult role to aspire to. As events move to their swift and inevitable conclusion, Stafford uncovers and indicts the social forces that require boys to sacrifice the feminine in order to become men and doom intelligent girls who aren't pretty.

Amber's mountain is beautiful, but it is a lonely place -- until the day Anna arrives, bringing both her friendship and the will to teach Amber how to read. Suddenly, Amber's world is filled with a new magic -- and new challenges. But when Anna returns to the city, will Amber be able to keep reading on her own?-- Heartwarming. -- Publishers Weekly, starred review

Two decades before the Civil War, a middle-class farmer named Samuel Maddox lies on his deathbed. Elsewhere in his Virginia home, a young woman named Kitty knows her life is about to change. She is one of the Maddox family's slaves-and Samuel's biological daughter. When Samuel's wife, Mary, inherits her husband's property, she will own Kitty, too, along with Kitty's three small children.Already in her fifties and with no children of her own, Mary Maddox has struggled to accept her husband's daughter, a strong-willed, confident, educated woman who works in the house and has been treated more like family than slave. After Samuel's death, Mary decides to grant Kitty and her children their freedom, and travels with them to Pennsylvania, where she will file papers declaring Kitty's emancipation. Helped on their perilous flight by Quaker families along the Underground Railroad, they finally reach the free state. But Kitty is not yet safe.Dragged back to Virginia by a gang of slave catchers led by Samuel's own nephew, who is determined to sell her and her children, Kitty takes a defiant step: charging the younger Maddox with kidnapping and assault. The sensational trial that follows will decide the fate of Kitty and her children.

REMEMBERING BLACK SATURDAYThere is a fire coming, and we need to move quickly. Mum and Dad start packing bags, grabbing woollen blankets, the first-aid kit, torches, and then the photo albums. Dad puts Ruby on her lead and ties her up near the back door. My chest feels hollow, like a birdcage. Atmospheric and intensely moving, this is the story of a family experiencing a bushfire, its devastating aftermath, and the long process of healing and rebuilding.

Sam Brooks and his younger sister, Sara, have suddenly found themselves lost in a vast mountain wilderness. Sam has never thought of himself as brave. After all, just last week, two neighborhood bullies made a fool out of him. And before that, his stepfather used to kick him around. But now, darkness has fallen and the woods are alive with terrifying dangers that Sam has never had to face before. He has no choice—Sam must be beyond brave if he and Sara are going to survive.

It’s 1961, and Harriet Elizabeth Oechsner has almost completed her sophomore year in high school, when she’s faced with the dreaded news that her family is moving again. This time it’s because her father Erik’s liberal theology and commitment to social justice has angered his parishioners, and he’s been forced to resign from his church after only a year as pastor. The resulting move thrusts the five members of the close knit Oechsner family into a community bathed in privilege, steeped in tradition, and staunchly resistant to change. Mountain Brook, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, is a community separated only by a mountain ridge from the struggle for human rights being waged on the other side. And yet, it’s a community so distanced by privilege and color from its parent city and the needs of the poor and disenfranchised within, that it may as well be on the other side of the world.Harriet must once again assume the role of the outsider adapting to another new school, her third in three years. Her encounters with new teachers and peers lead her into situations that are at times painful, lonely, embarrassing, shocking, and often humorous.Harriet’s adjustment to her new school is fraught by teenage angst and emotion; and, as a child of the Cold War and the civil rights era, she is thrust into the realities of injustice, separation, and the threat of nuclear holocaust. However, the story maintains a hopeful tone, as the plot is interwoven with themes of inclusiveness, loyalty, friendship, and reconciliation.Readers who fell in love with Hattie Robinson in Hattie’s Place and In the Fullness of Time, will be happy to know that Over the Mountain takes up two generations later, with Hattie’s granddaughter and namesake, Harriet, as the main character.