Title: Echo Valley
Author: Elinor Lyon
Publisher: Brookhampton / Follett
Date: 1965 (Brookhampton), 1967 (Follett)
ISBN: none
Length: 144 pages
Illustrations: drawings by Mary Dinsdale
Quote: “Even if it does come to a dead end, we might be able to get across to the road. It can’t be very far.”
Jenny and Rowena are early teenagers, still exploring the back roads and shortcuts around their little town as they do errands on their bicycles. Living in Wales, they enjoy beach and mountain views at the same time. While appreciating the scenic beauty, the birds and the flowers, they and brothers Mark and David naturally meet people—like Miss Russell, the former teacher who left town for thirty years after her fiancé died at sea. Echo Valley is a “Merit Mystery”; the mystery is what became of a valuable necklace Miss Russell’s fiancé said he was leaving for her, and the suspense is not so much how the children solve the mystery as how they can solve it in a way that’s tactful and respectful of Miss Russell’s long-tormented feelings.
In the previous story about these children, though the boys are younger, their role in finding the archaeological treasure was at least equal with the girls’. In this story, though the boys still have active parts, they’re seen more as little brothers, with the focus more on the teenaged girls. Jenny sees Rowena as the stronger, smarter, more decisive one but Rowena is fighting her first rounds with the selfconsciousness, false sensitivities and false guilts, that are still often deployed to keep women from developing strength, intelligence, or decisiveness. When she starts fretting that she’s not kind or patient or tactful enough, she does things that really are unkind, impatient, and tactless. For readers who already knew Rowena to be one of the more likable characters in twentieth century fiction aimed at young readers, adding this motif to a mostly action-focussed third-person story makes an interestingly terse character study.
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