Echo

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2015

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Part 2, Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2 , Chapter 1 Summary

The second part of Echo opens as Mike Flannery receives a signal from his little brother Frankie. The two live at Bishop’s, an orphanage in rural Pennsylvania, but in separate living quarters (the Uppers’ building and Lowers’ building, respectively). They have been there for the five months, since their grandmother’s death, and they have been working on farms rather than attending school. Frankie has learned that the headmistress, Pennyweather, will be introducing the two to foster families. Frankie is afraid he will be separated from his brother. Mike hopes for good news: a home that will keep them together. The only good thing about the orphanage is that it has a piano, though Mike would give that up for a new home.

Part 2, Chapter 2 Summary

Pennyweather calls for Mike and Frankie. Mike overhears her talking to someone asking about the piano, and he is afraid she will sell it. Mike and Frankie play, impressing the other boys, and he is sad to see it go, but hopeful about the prospect of a foster family. However, the couple has already taken on two boys to work their farm, so they are only interested in one more: Frankie. Frankie panics, and bites the husband. After the couple’s departure, Pennyweather scolds Mike, telling him that, although she said she would try to keep them together, she’ll soon be sending the Lowers to another home so that she can take on more Uppers and get them paying jobs on farms. (She will also take their paychecks, as their guardian.) Thus, they are unlikely to stay together anyway. She sends them to the cellar to think it over.

Part 2, Chapter 3 Summary

In the cellar, the brothers discuss Pennyweather. They speculate that the locked cabinets are full of the things she confiscated from boys, including their harmonicas. Mike asks Frankie to relay their family history. Frankie narrates: the two grew up in Philadelphia, and their father died when they were infants in a milling accident, so they lived with their grandmother and mother. Then, their mother died of consumption. To help Mike with his grief, she taught him the piano, and discovered he was gifted. Eventually, their grandmother became too sick to care for them, so she brought them to Bishop’s, the only orphanage with a piano. Then, Mike prompts Frankie to envision their future. They agree that they will go to New York and attend Carnegie Hall. It is Mike’s secret dream to play piano as part of the orchestra.

Part 2, Chapter 4 Summary

Mike discusses Pennyweather’s scheme to bring more boys of legal working age to Bishop’s. One, Mouse, asks Mike to come with him to town on an errand the next day. In town, Mouse runs away. Mike thinks about how different his situation is: because he is responsible for Frankie, he could never have the same freedom as Mouse. Mike feels trapped by circumstanceand doesn’t know how to keep himself and his brother together.

Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary

Frankie sees an advertisement for Hoxie’s Harmonica Wizards, a harmonica troupe of sixty boys. At the end of the summer, there will be a harmonica-playing contest, and the winner will get to join the band. The founder, Albert N. Hoxie, even finds homes for orphaned members of the band. Frankie and Mike consider auditioning but first need the money to buy the official band harmonica, the Hohner Harmonica. While Frankie is optimistic, Mike notes that Frankie is actually too young to join, and that it would take six weeks for a harmonica to arrive, by which time they might already be separated.

Part 2, Chapters 1-5 Analysis

This part of Echointroduces two boys, Mike and Frankie, who have some similarities to Friedrich. Like him, they are music enthusiasts, and like him, their close family taught them the value of music. While Friedrich and his family had to make a plan for escape in a hostile country, Mike and Frankie must find a way to stay together in the face of poverty and the scheming of their orphanage’s headmistress, Pennyweather.

Mike in particular takes solace in music: before he even learns to play, he bangs the piano, as if he knows that it is an instrument for expressing and processing difficult emotions. As he learns to play, it makes him safe and liked in the orphanage. The opportunity to join Hoxie’s Harmonica Wizards has the potential to be another way in which music could save him.

This part of the novel connects to the first part as the harmonica continues to be an important symbol. The two brothers are harmonica players, and, furthermore, are looking to buy harmonicas from Hohner, the very factory where Friedrich dropped his magic harmonica into a box.