Johanna Spyri

Heidi ate her name. She had already written a shelf. Hirzel, then Zürich. A first story about a woman who could not leave a violent house. Then fifty more: goat-boys, woodcarvers, children named Rico and Gritli, summers near Chur that she kept putting on the page. The orphan on the Alm was four weeks of work and a century of sequels she did not write. Husband and son gone in the same year. She kept going. The mountain girl is the postcard. The rest is a Swiss writer who knew the valley was not simple.