Wild Mountain Ivy: An Interview with Author Shannon Hitchcock

COVID changed the lives of so many young people and many are still recovering. In Wild Mountain Ivy twelve-year-old Ivy is still sick months after catching a common virus. Hoping a change of scenery will help, she’s spending the summer in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, where her uncle has converted an old house into a bed and breakfast. There she starts dreaming about another sick girl, Jessie, who lived in the same house a century ago. As Ivy delves into the history of the house, hoping to find out what happened to Jessie, she makes other discoveries that turn her summer in the mountains into a new beginning.

Today, author Shannon Hitchcock joins us to talk about how Wild Mountain Ivy came to be and how her debut novel The Ballad of Jessie Pearl ties into the story. Read on to download a free discussion guide!

How did you come up with your book’s title, Wild Mountain Ivy?

At the time, I was living in Hendersonville, North Carolina, and while on a walk through my neighborhood, I noticed a street sign for a street called Wild Mountain Ivy. I immediately thought it would make a great book title, and as soon as I returned home, jotted it in my notebook. The only problem was I didn’t have a story to go with the title, and it took several years before I came up with one.

Speaking of not having a story to go with the title, how did Ivy’s story come to be?

It was a roundabout journey that started with my debut novel, The Ballad of Jessie Pearl. That book is inspired by a family story, specifically my grandmother who lived through the tuberculosis pandemic. When I lived through a pandemic of my own—the Covid-19 pandemic that started in 2020—I began to think about revisiting Jessie’s story.

When I was in elementary school, Requiem for a Princess by Ruth M. Arthur was my favorite book. In Requiem, Willow is staying in a private hotel for the summer, and the ghost of a sixteenth century girl haunts her dreams. This helped inspire the premise of Wild Mountain Ivy: A girl suffering from long Covid who spends the summer at a bed & breakfast that used to be a tuberculosis sanatorium. That girl, Ivy, is visited by the spirit of Jessie Pearl, the heroine of my debut novel.

Why did you set your book In Asheville, North Carolina?

I set Wild Mountain Ivy in Asheville, where I live now, because of the city’s long history with tuberculosis patients. It attracted so many sufferers that a pamphlet published in 1915 by the US Public Health Service declared North Carolina to have the largest number of tuberculosis patients in the world.

What is something you have in common with the character Ivy Presnell?

We both grapple with moving. In my case, I have lived in North Carolina, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Georgia, and Florida. Each move brought new adventures but also deep sorrow at leaving a place I’d come to love. Ivy struggles with those same feelings. She will have to leave her best friend, her music teacher, and her school. That’s the reality for a lot of kids.

What was your goal in writing this book?

I had multiple goals. First, I wanted to try something new. I had never written a ghost story, so that was a challenge. I also wanted to write a book that some kid out there would love as much as I’d loved Requiem for a Princess. But another goal was to save my debut novel, The Ballad of Jessie Pearl. That book had recently gone out of print and I hoped that writing a sequel would lead to it being reissued. I am delighted that turned out to be the case.

What do you hope readers will gain from Ivy’s story?

A sense of history. Ivy discovers lots of parallels between the tuberculosis pandemic that Jessie lived through and the Covid pandemic that she is living through. History really does have a way of repeating itself.

Read Jessie’s story

The Ballad of Jessie Pearl is available as in eBook format! This middle grade novel is an immersive story of family, survival, and hope.

It’s 1922, and fourteen-year-old Jessie has big plans. She’s going to go to teachers’ college, get out of her small North Carolina town, and see the world. But when tuberculosis strikes her family, she’s forced to put her dreams on hold. There’s no cure yet for the deadly disease, so as Jessie’s older sisters weaken, it’s up to Jessie to keep the household running and take care of her baby nephew. Amidst cooking, cleaning, and nursing, will she still be able to carve out the life she wants for herself?

Free Educator Resources

After reading Wild Mountain Ivy, encourage reflection and conversation with this discussion guide!

Praise for Wild Mountain Ivy

“Full of found family that feels like a warm hug, interwoven historical narratives from Hitchcock’s previous work, and a compelling protagonist, this is a sweet middle-grade novel that promises an uplifting variation on the pandemic story and resonates deeply with Appalachian spirit.”—Booklist

“A first purchase for collections in need of stories centering young people with chronic illness.”—School Library Journal

“Imaginative and rich in detail, this novel flows between timelines as seamlessly and soulfully as a mountain ballad.”—Kerry O’Malley Cerra, author of Make a Little Wave and Hear Me

“Shannon Hitchcock’s timely and timeless story about the heartbreak of loss and the healing power of love and family will make your heart sing!”—Bobbie Pyron, award-winning author of Octopus Moon and Stay

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