Up in the mountains Book

This book follows the life of an unnamed, eleven-year-old boy and his family dynamic. His brother is sixteen, and used to be his best friend, but now ignores him for his other friends and girlfriend. After the narrator has given up on trying to connect with his brother, his mom says that she is pregnant again, seemingly embarrassed. The narrator does not know what to say, because he does not really care. He believes that being the middle child, he will now not have to worry about rules around the house.

There's a poem where it talks about the narrator's brother falling through ice and being in the ICU for a long time, on a respirator. There are a couple poems talking about how he has healed, but we see none of the healing process or the real trauma his family is going through. After this, we are thrown to stories about the grandparents, and then thrown into the family reunion.

At the family reunion, we have a large segment of poems. They each describe a different family member and what they contribute to the overall family dynamic. Once a family member has been written about, they are not brought up again. The mother gives birth to a daughter, a baby the narrator calls perfect and whole. They then begin to change how they walk and talk, so as not to wake the baby.

In the end of the book, we see the narrator with his grandfather, a war hero. They talk about their ancestors and what they did in life. Then they talk about the narrator's future, and he says he wants to be a writer when he grows up. It ends beautifully with the grandfather asking "what feathers will you use to make your words fly straight and true?"