Jean Craighead George published My Side of the mountain in 1959, a Newbery Honor Book and coming-of-age story that has enthralled and entertained generations of would-be Sams. But her terrible longing for that one mountain among thousands, her first home'a longing so noble and generous yet so dangerous'will govern her to either heartbreaking failure or hart-aching triumph, a triumph so right and so natural that readers will want to take to the skies in celebration. With evolution and a proud natural intelligence on her side, Frightful may yet beat the odds of famine, winter, and human encroachment. But despite a letter-writing campaign by local schoolchildren, other would despoil her Catskill home'designing fatal electrical wires and disturbing good nesting areas with jackhammers and paint trucks. Sam, so patient and kind, will support her from afar, and so will bird activists Jon and Susan wood and conservationist Leon Longbridge. She can barely even feed herself, for although she is a skilled hunter, it was always Sam who signaled permission to partake of the kill. She has no idea how to migrate, mate, or be a mother. Raised by Sam, Frightful is an imprinted bird. Now at last we pick up the sotry'but this time, the narrative continues through Frightful's keen-sighted eyes. Readers last head from Sam Gribley a decade ago, when he kept the hardest resolution of his life and let his falcon partner go free. So begins the third book in the wilderness series that has lifted imaginations around the worlds. The one mountain was her territory, the one tree was Sam's house, the perch beside it, her place. And the one boy who called himself Sam Gribley. She must find one mountain among thousands, one hemlock tree among millions.

Suddenly an all-invading passion filled her. It was not the soft song of wind humming through the hemlock needles of home.įrightful was a long way from her familiar forest.

The wind-music conjured up images of a strange woods and unknown flowers. She listened t the wind whistling through the pine needles. She remained quiet and clam, like all daytime birds in the dark.

A falconer's hood covered her head and eyes. Frightful, the pelegrine falcon, could not see.

Frightful's mountain book