“Every long, gray rain that found its way into our sad tent reminded them of how we had lost our house. Sold nearly everything we owned. Took what little was left. And went looking for a way to survive until the world tipped back to well.”

Ellie thinks about her mother and sister and the way they reacted to losing everything. Moving to the mountain felt easy and natural for Ellie, but for them, it was the biggest sacrifice they would ever have to make. Like many families at the time, Ellie’s family had little choice but to find a new way of life. While Ellie becomes settled into mountain life and wishes to stay there, her mother and sister never really seem to, always longing to go back or waiting until the day they can return to town.

“I myself was two opposite things at the same time. One: I was now an excellent woods-girl who could hunt and trap and fish and harvest as if I’d been born into it. Two: I was an echo-girl. When I clubbed a fish to death, my own head ached and shuddered. When I snared a rabbit, I knew what it meant to be trapped. And when I pulled a carrot from the sheath of its earth, I, too, missed the darkness. There were times when this two-ness made me feel as if I were being stretched east and west, my bones creaking and crying as they strained back toward one.”

One of the novel’s central themes is The Duality in All Things, and Ellie refers to this concept frequently. She herself feels as if she is split between two worlds and two selves. The first is the girl who quickly found her place on the mountain, enthusiastically learning what it had to teach. The other is the girl who feels empathy for everything around her, and her need to survive and help her family survive by utilizing nature often conflicts with her visceral experiences of empathy.