Heidi (; ) is a work of children's fiction published between 1880 and 1881 by Swiss author Johanna Spyri, originally published in two parts as Heidi: Her Years of Wandering and Learning () and Heidi: How She Used What She Learned (). It is a novel about the events in the life of a 5-year-old girl in her paternal grandfather's care in the Swiss Alps. It was written as a book "for children and those who love children" (as quoted from its subtitle).
Heidi is one of the best-selling books ever written and is among the best-known works of Swiss literature.
Plot
In the town of Dörfli ('small village' in Swiss German), lived two brothers. The older wasted the family fortune on drinking and gambling, while the younger ran away to serve in the Italian Army in Naples. Upon his return with a son, Tobias, the villagers ostracize him and create rumors surrounding his life in Naples. The man becomes known as The Alm-Uncle, as he lives in seclusion on the mountain Alm. Two village girls, sisters Dete and Adelheid, befriend Tobias. When they grow, Dete takes a job in the town of Maienfeld, in the Grisons, as a hotel maid. Adelheid and Tobias marry and work as carpenters. They have a daughter, named Adelheid but affectionately nicknamed Heidi. Soon after Tobias is killed in a work accident and Adelheid dies of shock. The Alm-Uncle holds this against God.
Heidi is initially raised by her maternal grandmother and Dete in Maienfeld. Shortly after the grandmother's death, Dete is offered a good job as a maid in the big city, and takes 5-year-old Heidi to her paternal grandfather's house, up the mountain from Dörfli. He has been at odds with the villagers and embittered against God for years and lives in seclusion on the Alm, which has earned him the nickname 'The Alm-Uncle'. He briefly resents Heidi's arrival, but the girl's evident intelligence and cheerful yet unaffected demeanour soon earn his genuine, if reserved, love. Heidi enthusiastically befriends her new neighbours, young Peter the goatherd, his mother Brigitte, and his blind maternal grandmother. With each season that passes, the mountaintop inhabitants, especially Peter and the grandmother, grow more attached to Heidi, and she to them. However, the grandfather refuses to allow Heidi to attend school, and quarrels with the local pastor and schoolmaster, who try to encourage him to do so, and Heidi is illiterate as a result.
Three years later, Dete returns to take Heidi to Frankfurt to be a hired lady's companion to a wealthy girl named Klara Sesemann, who is unable to walk and regarded as an invalid. Klara is charmed by Heidi's simple friendliness and her descriptions of life on the Alm, and delights in all the funny mishaps brought about by Heidi's naïvety and lack of experience with city life. However, the Sesemanns' strict housekeeper, Fräulein Rottenmeier, views the household disruptions as wanton misbehaviour, and places the free-spirited Heidi under more and more restraint, forbidding her to talk of the Alps or to cry for home. Soon, Heidi becomes terribly homesick for the Alm, and grows alarmingly pale and thin. Her one diversion is learning to read and write using a collection of Biblical stories, motivated by Klara's grandmother Frau Sesemann who shows her trust and affection, and encourages her to believe in God and to pray. Later Frau Sesemann gifts Heidi the book.
Heidi's intractable homesickness leads to episodes of sleepwalking where she goes downstairs and opens the front door, which the household initially takes as the work of ghosts, and the family doctor recommends she be sent home as a matter of urgency before she becomes seriously ill. She returns to the mountains laden with presents for her friends and the book from Frau Sesemann, but finds one of her greatest pleasures is reading hymns to Peter's blind grandmother, who can no longer do so for herself. Her faith in God speaks to something in the Alm-Uncle. One day Heidi reads to him "The Prodigal Son" from a book Frau Sesemann gave her. That night Alm-Uncle prays for the first time in years. He accompanies Heidi to church, and that winter takes accommodation in the village so that she can attend school.