Echo

In the middle of the 19th century, Otto is playing hide and seek in the forest with Mathilde. While he’s in his hiding spot, he reads a story about the sisters Eins, Zwei, and Drei, who get cursed by a witch to be stuck inside a harmonica. The line between the story and Otto’s life blurs as he seems to meet the sisters themselves in the forest. They give him a special harmonica as a gift.

In 1933, in Trossingen, Germany, Friedrich is a boy who lives with his father, Mr. Schmidt. He has a birthmark and sometimes behaves oddly when he seems to hear music that no one else can. Friedrich’s source of comfort becomes a harmonica factory where he both does an apprenticeship and gets his education. At the factory, Friedrich finds a special harmonica with an M on it that is able to make particularly beautiful music.

Although Friedrich’s sister Elisabeth initially looks out for Friedrich and protects him from bullies, everything changes once she becomes Hitlerite and starts talking about reporting Friedrich’s “impurity” so that he can be surgically sterilized. Friedrich and his father develop a scheme to try to save Friedrich by getting him accepted to a musical conservatory, which would get him an exemption from surgery due to his talent. But that all changes once soldiers come to interrogate Mr. Schmidt and end up imprisoning him in the Dachau prison camp.

Friedrich learns that he might be able to save his father by offering a bribe to the commandant at the camp, but he doesn’t have enough money. He writes to Elisabeth and she smuggles him money. Friedrich sets out on a journey to save his father, leaving his harmonica to be shipped out of Germany from the factory so that it doesn’t get confiscated. But as he’s getting into the train, two soldiers apprehend him.

Meanwhile in Philadelphia in 1935, Mike lives in an orphanage with his younger brother, Frankie. The two of them are in danger of being separated, so they come up with a plan to run away and join Hoxie’s famous harmonica band for boys. Just when the two of them are about to be separated, the lawyers Mr. Golding and Mr. Howard come to the orphanage with the unusual request of seeing a piano demonstration from Mike and Frankie. The two of them unexpectedly get adopted together by a wealthy heiress named Eunice.

Although life with Eunice is much better than the orphanage, Eunice herself keeps her distance from the boys. Mr. Howard takes Mike and Frankie shopping at a music store, and Mike finds a special harmonica with an M on it. As time goes on, Mike begins to fear Eunice will un-adopt him and his brother, so he goes to Eunice and proposes a plan: Mike will voluntarily leave, attempting to join the harmonica band, if she agrees to keep Frankie. Eunice accepts the offer.

Mike tries out for the harmonica band. Although Eunice seems to be warming up to him and acting more motherly, one day Mike finds papers about reversing the adoption. Mike makes a plan with Frankie to run away again, but as they’re leaving, Mike falls out of a tree.

The story picks up in La Colonia outside Fresno, California, in 1942. Ivy lives with her parents, Mama and Papa. Her brother Fernando is off fighting in World War II. Ivy is excited that her music teacher Miss Delgado is giving her an opportunity to play a harmonica solo on the radio—Ivy has a special harmonica with an M on it, which she received as part of a donation program that Miss Delgado found out about. But before that concert happens, Papa breaks the news that they have to leave their home immediately to move to a farm outside Los Angeles. The family is supposed to watch the farm while the farm’s original Japanese owners, the Yamamotos, are imprisoned at an internment camp. Although Ivy is sad about leaving behind her old friends, she quickly makes a new one in her neighbor Susan.

Ivy is excited that she and Susan are in the same grade, but she is shocked to learn on her first day of school that she has to go to a separate “Americanization” school, where conditions are much worse. Papa vows to fight this, but previous attempts by parents to integrate the schools haven’t succeeded.

Ivy learns about the prejudice many have against Japanese people. In particular, she learns that Susan’s father, Mr. Ward, believes conspiracy theories about the Japanese being spies, largely because the Yamamoto son Kenneth helped convince Mr. Ward’s son, Donald, to join the Marines. Joining up ultimately led to Donald’s death. But when Papa allows Mr. Ward to search the Yamamoto house, Ivy reveals the truth: the Yamamotos aren’t hiding spy secrets, just valuable items like musical instruments that their friends and neighbors couldn’t take with them to internment camps.

Kenneth comes back from his tour of duty to inspect how Papa and Mama are taking care of the farm, and he approves. Ivy gives him her special harmonica as a gift. One day while Ivy is putting together a plan to sell fruit with Susan, a telegram messenger comes to Ivy’s house. Ivy rushes back, fearing that he has brought news of Fernando dying in the war.

In New York City in 1951, fate brings Friedrich, Mike, and Ivy to Carnegie Hall at the same time. Friedrich saved his father from the Nazis and became a famous conductor, Mike has accepted Eunice as his mother and became a musician, and Ivy’s brother Fernando survived the war with only an injury while Ivy herself also became a musician. The harmonica that Ivy lent Kenneth stopped a bullet to his heart, saving his life.

The destruction of the harmonica also finally frees the sisters Eins, Zwei, and Drei from their curse. The ending reveals that it was Otto who initially placed the harmonica in the factory where Friedrich found it, writing an M on it for “Messenger” and setting the story’s events in motion.