Orphanages of an earlier era, say, before the 1960's are widely believed to have been hell holes that cruelly worked and starved the children in their care, as portrayed in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist. To this day Dickensian images of orphanages continue to throttle the public debate over to how best care for children of deprivation, neglect, and abuse. Richard McKenzie, spent much of the fall of 2011 embedded in a self-proclaimed modern-day orphanage, The Crossnore School, which is home for close to a hundred children in a remote corner of North Carolina's Appalachian Mountains. Miracle Mountain: A Hidden Sanctuary for Children, Horses, and Birds Off of a Road Less Traveled is his account of life there, as related through the eyes of the children in residence who have heartbreaking and heartwarming stories of childhood traumas and recoveries. McKenzie found The Crossnore School to be a beautiful, peaceful place where hurting children can find a sanctuary in which they can renew and redirect their spirits and lives.The school has an equestrian center with horses that also have been rescued from abuse and neglect.The equestrian center provides two-way therapy, with horses helping the children overcome their problems while the children help the horses to restore their trust in human beings. The reference in the book's title to Crossnore being a sanctuary for birds comes from the many birdfeeders and birdbaths scattered across the Crossnore campus, which are tended by crews of small children. No account of Crossnore would be complete without coverage of its head Phyllis Crain, who, in her twelve years at the school's helm, transformed the campus. She guided the school with a down-to-earth philosophy and with a passion for children rarely found in child welfare circles. Miracle Mountain is for a general audience, especially readers who are attracted to heartwarming stories from one of the most unlikely of places, an orphanage. However, the book has a larger purpose - to ignite the debate over the place of children's homes in a menu of childcare options. - from Amzon