Escape To Witch Mountain - Novel

Novel

The novel written by Alexander Key is about two orphaned siblings, Tony and Tia, who have paranormal abilities. Tony possesses the ability of telekinesis, which he can access most readily through playing music, particularly his harmonica. Tia's powers include the ability to unlock any door by touch and communicate with animals. Both siblings can communicate via ultrasonic speech audible only to each other; but Tia cannot speak normally and is regarded as strange because of this. It is later revealed that Tia is not unusual in this respect, but Tony is; few of their kind have the ability to speak out loud. After their foster guardian, Mrs. Malone, dies, they are placed by social services in a juvenile detention home under grim, unwholesome conditions, where Tia befriends a black cat, Winkie.

Both have suppressed memories of their past, but discover a clue in an old road map hidden in Tia's "star case", a leather purse-like box with a double-star design on it. When a man claiming to be the brother of their deceased father shows up at the detention center to take custody of them, they instinctively know he is not their uncle and has ulterior motives. With the assistance of an inner-city Roman Catholic priest, Father O'Day, the pair run away, following the map's route leading towards the Blue Ridge Mountains. As their memories begin to return, they realize that they are actually of extraterrestrial origin, their people having come to Earth because their own planet was dying. Through a series of hardships, Tony and Tia find their way to their own people. When their would-be captor, Lucas Deranian, attempts to interrogate Father O'Day (who O'Day earlier in the novel had likened to the devil), the priest speaks to the effect that God is capable of creating many worlds and many peoples; that there are "mysteries far beyond narrow dreaming".

As with most of Alexander Key's stories, the embattled protagonists find that most of the people they meet are untrustworthy, greedy, and hateful — making the decency of the few all the more poignant. O'Day puts himself in danger in order to help Tony and Tia, but he does so willingly, because their battle presents O'Day with an opportunity to fight the agents of evil, which is what he knows is his purpose in life, and will deliver meaning to his life.

The novel was illustrated by Leon B. Wisdom, Jr. and originally published in 1968 by The Westminster Press in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For a novel aimed at children/young adults, Escape to Witch Mountain is filled with deep layers of meaning and character and works on a number of thematic levels. The writing style is sophisticated and the auther does not talk down to his readers.