Jack and Jill

From that hush, Louisa May Alcott builds a whole village. Jack mends slowly in his mother's comfortable rooms; Jill lies in her mother's poor little cottage, her hurt mostly in her conscience. Between the two homes, clever Frank rigs a clothesline "telegraph" so notes and treats and drawings can travel back and forth, and the invalids' friends crowd in around them: spirited Molly Loo, romantic Merry, sweet-faced Ed Devlin. A long ray of light streams from the great house across the dark yard onto the little cottage, one house keeping watch over the other.

Wise Mrs. Minot puts it best: pain and sorrow "show us how well we are loved, how much kindness there is in the world, and how easily we can make others happy." Christmas transforms an ordinary room into a fairy garden of morning-glories and evergreen, church bells ringing outside as a hush falls over the children. A homemade string telephone turns a childish quarrel into a small ritual of forgiveness.

What moves through these pages is the slow, patient work of two proud children learning to be brave in a way sledding never asked of them. The door stands open on a village where recovery becomes everyone's shared project, and where the seasons ahead hold more growing than any of them expects.