by Meru S.
Destinies merge in Pam Muñoz Ryan’s lyrically written novel, Echo. And it all begins with a harmonica.
One fateful day, while playing a game of hide-and-seek with his friends, a young boy by the name of Otto loses his way in a forest where he is hiding. With him, he has only a harmonica, and a book that he discovers is strangely unfinished. Wandering astray amongst the trees, Otto injures himself and falls unconscious. When he wakes, he encounters three young women whom he recognizes as characters from his book.
A cruel witch had enchanted these sisters, Ains, Zwei, and Drei away to a world where time did not pass even though the sun would rise and set. When the witch had cast the spell, she had spitefully called the sisters her ‘little piccolos’ owing to their beautiful voices. Therefore, the only way they could escape was if their spirits were transported from that world by a woodwind instrument. In her spell, she proclaimed that they must also save a soul from death to be completely free. So Ains, Zwei, and Drei, each in turn, play a melody on Otto’s harmonica, their spirits entering into its depth, and bid him to pass it on to another when the time was right.
Decades later, Friedrich, a German boy living with his father in the town of Trossingen, discovers the harmonica in a machine junkyard. Its smooth sound captivates and comforts him during the early years of World War II. When he and his uncle hatch a plan to rescue Friedrich’s father from the Nazi soldiers, the harmonica gives him the courage to withstand hardship and brave the dangers.
It is the summer of the year 1935. Eleven-year-old Mike and his younger brother Frankie have been living in an orphanage in Pennsylvania since their loving grandmother grew too old to care for them any longer. Though they both want to stay together, they know that it may come to pass that they may be adopted into separate families. Aware that his brother would be upset to leave him, Mike is determined to prevent this from happening. One day, a kindly friend buys two harmonicas for the siblings to replace the ones confiscated at their arrival at the orphanage. As Mike breathes into his instrument, all his worries melt away.
Ivy is a young girl living in Southern California. She eagerly awaits the day when her class will perform together on the radio with harmonicas. But then her father is offered the job of a farm supervisor in Orange County, hours away from their home in La Colonia. Ivy’s mother regretfully informs her that they must move the very next day. Though she is utterly dismayed to miss the performance and leave her close friend, Araceli, Ivy cannot but submit to the opportunity. As she and her parents adjust to their new home, the cheerful sound that her harmonica produces brings back happy memories of past years before her brother enlisted in the military and her family was whole.
Author Pam Muñoz Ryan has mixed the perfect amount of sadness, joy, and love into Echo. Readers will be engrossed by this flowing tale of music, fantasy, and even slight touches of mystery combined.
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