Heidi

As mentioned last week, I finished reading Heidi in French. It was something I was mostly doing on the side rather than my normal reading. Even so, it took longer than I thought, despite the fact that it's easier to read. The problem was that almost nothing happens in the story, which was published in 1881.

The story starts out with Heidi's aunt dumping orphaned Heidi at her grandfather's house in the Swiss Alps and the aunt running off to live her own life. Heidi lives there a while before the aunt comes back and kidnaps her and takes her to Frankfurt before running off again. Heidi lives in Frankfurt for a while until she gets so homesick it affects her health. A doctor orders her home. She reunites with her grandfather and lives happily ever after.

You're probably wondering why it's a classic. I wondered that the whole book. During Heidi's time in Frankfurt, one weekend she learned to read at a high level. Her favorite story was the prodigal son from the New Testament. When she returns home, she reads it to her grandfather. It changes his life. He prays a prayer of repentance and takes Heidi to church on Sunday. The ending is what makes it a classic. The restoration of the grandfather and how he's welcomed back into the community after being a grumpy old cuss for quite a long time is the power of the story.

The ending was good. It just took a long, hard slog to get there. There were a lot of missed opportunities. If I was doing a story based on Heidi, I'd make a few changes to make it more interesting to read. The grandfather would have worked for MI6 in the past. The aunt, unknown to her, works for his old nemesis from the KGB or possibly, since Heidi went to Frankfurt, the Stasi. After Heidi's kidnapping, the grandfather tries to track her but fails. Instead of training to be a domestic servant the way she was in the original, Heidi is held prisoner by her grandfather's nemesis. Her guard teaches her to read, so she won't bother him so much wanting to be read stories. She overhears the nemesis's plot for revenge on her grandfather and uses her newfound book knowledge to escape imprisonment and hides with the family in the original story where was training to be a servant. From there she devises a trap for the nemesis, which requires her to lure him to her grandfather's cabin. She flees Frankfurt in the dead of night with the nemesis one step behind her. At grandfather's she bursts into the cabin and shouts a code word she learned at the nemesis's lair. Grandfather's MI6 reflexes take over, and he grabs his old service pistol and gets into a shootout with the nemesis. Heidi provides a key distraction, allowing the grandfather to shoot the nemesis. They tell the other villagers he was a prowler, but secretly the grandfather alerts MI6 that the old threat has been eliminated. Then Heidi would read him the story of the prodigal son, and they would go to church.

Technically, they didn't have all those agencies in 1881, but it makes for a much better story. We could update the setting to more modern times. At least that way, something would happen in the book instead of it being a dry, blow-by-blow description of Heidi's child life.

Have a great weekend.