From Publishers Weekly
A couple seeks life's deeper meaning in a return to the land—"a place that would keep us young and free and filled with passion"—and faces both hardship and joy. It's a familiar American story these days, but Johnson tells it with compassion and grace, focusing in particular on his wife Amy's pregnancy and their preparations to bring a baby into their wilderness world. Amy and the author must refurbish their cabin, which is situated on his family's Idaho land; they worry about money; they debate about where Amy will give birth. But the narrative takes a wrenching turn when they learn that Amy is unlikely to carry the fetus to term. The desperate measures the author once took to save a winter-born calf poignantly resonate with the couple's ultimately futile attempts to bring their baby, Hannah, to term. A later pregnancy ends in miscarriage. These sorrows can make for grim material, and readers expecting lots of lovely nature writing will be disappointed, but Johnson is an elegant, emotive narrator; as the couple's story of healing progresses, one will sense that happiness (and a baby) will find these two eventually. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
One wonders that such a deeply personal, private story about becoming a father could ever be written. Yet teacher, poet, and fiction writer (Mastodon: 80% Complete, 2001) Johnson seems to need to relive the joys and pains of his experience with wife Amy in Idaho. Young and underemployed, the couple decide to finish an Idaho log cabin and live and work there, because they "wanted to go out and meet those lives in a place that would keep [them] young and free and filled with passion." The going gets rough; money and real jobs are scarce. Amy becomes the major breadwinner and, once pregnant, is confined to bed rest because of physical issues. Sadly, Hannah is stillborn, as is a second child. Along the way, the couple's trials are buoyed by the events of nature, the essential goodness of humanity, and their mutual love. Elegant writing and sharp dialogue mark this bittersweet account. Alan Moores
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
Longing for a home in big, wild country that would keep them passionate and young, Jonathan Johnson and his wife, Amy, set out to build a log cabin on his family's land in a remote and beautiful corner of Idaho. But what began as a doable dream for the two of them suddenly looks quite different when, on their first morning in the cabin-without electricity, a telephone, running water, or real windows-the couple learn that Amy is pregnant. In this lyrical and intimate chronicle of making a home the hard way, Johnson describes the competing joys and anxieties of preparing for fatherhood in a setting as challenging as it is promising: a paradise of mythic snowfalls and warming wood stoves and elk tracks at the front door, but also a place where vision, and even struggle and compromise, are not always enough. Hannah and the Mountain tells a rare and delicate story of two people exploring the unmapped territories of loss and grief and finding solace and grace in the mountains. It offers the reader an unforgettable portrait of a couple growing up, learning nature's hard and beautiful lessons, and discovering a love of place and each other strong and wild enough to renew them and be carried into the future. Jonathan Johnson is an assistant professor at the Inland Northwest Center for Writers, the graduate writing program at Eastern Washington University. His work has appeared in various literary magazines and in The Best American Poetry. He is the author of Mastodon, 80% Complete, a book of poems.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Longing for a home in big, wild country that would keep them passionate and young, Jonathan Johnson and his wife, Amy, set out to build a log cabin on his family's land in a remote and beautiful corner of Idaho. But what began as a doable dream for the two of them suddenly looks quite different when, on their first morning in the cabin - without electricity, a telephone, running water, or real windows - the couple learn that Amy is pregnant." In this intimate chronicle of making a home the hard way, Johnson describes the competing joys and anxieties of preparing for fatherhood in a setting as challenging as it is promising: a paradise of mythic snowfalls and warming wood stoves and elk tracks at the front door, but also a place where vision, and even struggle and compromise, are not always enough. Hannah and the Mountain tells a story of two people exploring the unmapped territories of loss and grief and finding solace and grace in the mountains.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly