Jack Cardinal swerves to avoid a pedestrian during a family car trip, crashing the vehicle and dying while leaving Amanda catatonic.

At Jack's funeral, Lou insists all four family members, including catatonic Amanda, must be sent to live with great-grandmother Louisa in Virginia.

Lou and Oz arrive in the Virginia mountains, where a boy named Diamond and a farmhand named Eugene collect them from the train station.

Louisa Mae Cardinal dismisses the hired nurse and takes personal charge of Amanda and the two children on her mountain farm.

Diamond takes Lou and Oz to a legendary wishing well and explains it grants any wish in exchange for one's most precious possession.

Lou and Oz start at the local one-room schoolhouse, and Lou beats up a bully named Billy Davis who picks on her brother.

Oz sneaks out alone at night to leave his beloved teddy bear at the wishing well and wish for his mother's recovery.

Cotton Longfellow brings a gramophone to the farm and everyone dances together while Amanda shows a faint flicker of response in her room.

Lou and Oz sneak into Louisa's coal mine and discover a gas company crew secretly drilling on the property without permission.

Southern Gas and Coal Company representatives offer Louisa one hundred thousand dollars for her farm, but she refuses to sell her home.

Someone sets Louisa's barn on fire overnight, killing all the hogs, and the shock of the disaster causes Louisa to suffer a stroke.

The gas company hires a powerful Richmond lawyer to have Louisa declared mentally incompetent, and a judge orders a jury trial.

Lou takes Oz to the wishing well and sacrifices Amanda's packet of letters, wishing for Louisa's recovery rather than her own mother's.

The jury rules in favor of the gas company, and Cotton learns that Louisa has died in the hospital during deliberations.

Lou and Oz enter the courtroom with Amanda, who has fully recovered from her catatonia and greets Cotton Longfellow by name.

The story begins when a car accident kills Jack Cardinal and leaves his wife Amanda catatonic, forcing his children Lou and Oz to seek shelter with their great-grandmother Louisa in the mountains of Virginia. Lou and Oz adapt to the hardships of farm life and form bonds with the lawyer Cotton Longfellow and a mountain boy named Diamond. Their new life is threatened when a powerful gas company discovers natural resources on Louisa's land and uses increasingly ruthless tactics to force a sale. After a suspicious barn fire destroys the family's livestock and Louisa suffers a stroke, the gas company moves to have her declared mentally incompetent in a jury trial. Just as all hope seems lost — with Louisa dead and the verdict going against the family — Amanda walks into the courtroom fully recovered, saving the farm and reuniting what remains of the Cardinal family.

The Cardinal family's tragedy and the fight to save Louisa's mountain home.

At Jack's funeral, Lou overhears estate executors speculating about what to do with two children who have no surviving guardian.

Lou and Oz travel by train through the Appalachian Mountains, speculating nervously about what their new life with a stranger will be like.

Eugene, a lame farmhand who works for Louisa, drives Lou, Oz, and Amanda up narrow mountain roads to the Cardinal farmstead.

Louisa tells a hopeful Oz to keep believing he can help his mother recover, even as Lou mocks his efforts.

George Davis threatens Lou and Oz at gunpoint near his property until the scream of the mountain lion Old Mo drives him away.

Cotton Longfellow visits Louisa's farm and reveals that Jack left no inheritance to support his wife and children.

Diamond leads Lou and Oz on a hazardous mountain hike to Dickens, where they watch a moving picture show for the first time.

Cotton drives the children past a desolate coal company town to show them the poverty and disease that afflict the miners who live there.

Lou, Oz, and Diamond accidentally discover George Davis's illegal moonshine still, and Diamond knocks the furious man unconscious with a piece of timber.

Lou asks Louisa why Jack never returned to the mountains, and Louisa reveals that his mother abandoned the family when he was young.

Lou and Louisa act as midwives during Mrs. Davis's labor while Old Mo's scream draws George outside and prevents him from interfering.

Diamond runs into Louisa's coal mine to rescue his dog Jeb from a dynamite blast and is killed in the explosion.

Neighbors from across the mountain arrive to raise a new barn for the Cardinals, repaying Louisa's years of quiet generosity to the community.

Cotton sells his beloved personal book collection to raise the two hundred and fifty dollars needed to pay Louisa's suddenly demanded back taxes.

Lou breaks down and tearfully tells her catatonic mother she loves her, and a single tear slips silently down Amanda's cheek.

Before the Cardinal children can adapt to their new home, they must survive the journey from New York and make sense of the unfamiliar people and customs of the Virginia mountains. Neighbors like the ill-tempered George Davis and the charming orphan Diamond introduce Lou and Oz to the dangers and wonders of high rock, while Cotton Longfellow becomes a quiet pillar of support for the whole family. Outings to the nearby town of Dickens and encounters with the failing coal industry reveal the fragile economy of the mountain community. When Diamond is killed in a mine explosion and Louisa is felled by a stroke, the community shows its true character — neighbors arrive to raise a new barn and Cotton sacrifices his prized book collection to keep the farm solvent. Through her grief, Lou finally begins to open her heart to her mother, breaking through the emotional wall she has maintained since the car crash.

The people and community that shape life on the Virginia mountain.

Amanda begs Jack to abandon Hollywood and move the family back to the Virginia mountains in their final conversation before the fatal crash.

Lou discovers her father Jack's initials carved into a writing desk in the room where he once lived as a boy.

Louisa gives Lou a packet of letters Amanda wrote over the years, but Lou shuts them away in the desk drawer without reading them.

Cotton reads Jack's old letters aloud to catatonic Amanda while Lou secretly climbs outside the window to eavesdrop on her father's words.

Lou sneaks alone to the wishing well after dark and leaves a photo of herself and Amanda as her own sacrifice.

The first spring crops push through the soil and Lou runs excitedly to share the news with the entire household, including her silent mother.

Lou discovers a hidden Cardinal family cemetery near the farm, including an unfamiliar grave for someone named Annie Cardinal.

Lou visits Diamond alone at his mountain cabin and he tells her she still has something he never had — her living mother.

Oz asks Lou to read Amanda's old letters aloud, and Lou keeps reading long after her brother has fallen asleep.

Following Diamond's death, Lou tells Cotton she wants to start reading to her mother, hoping to call Amanda back to herself.

Lou finds a hickory carving Diamond had secretly been making — a heart shape bearing both their initials — proving he always knew his letters.

Lou reads aloud a story her teenage father once wrote and tells Louisa for the first time that the mountain has become her home too.

Lou visits Louisa in the hospital and whispers that she loves her; Louisa mouths the same words back before growing still forever.

Cotton argues in court that the gas company's illegal drilling released gas into the mine, making the company responsible for Diamond's death.

Decades later, Lou writes about returning to the Virginia mountain in her old age, content to spend her final days on high rock.

The deepest story in Wish You Well is Lou's inner transformation from a girl who trusts only hard facts to one who dares to believe in things she cannot explain. From her refusal to open her mother's letters to her secret visit to the wishing well, Lou's emotional thaw is measured in small private moments of surrender and connection. The deaths of Diamond and the discovery of her father's teenage writings force Lou to confront how deeply she belongs to the mountain and to the people who love her. Her willingness to wish for Louisa's recovery rather than her own mother's marks the true turning point of her journey from grief to faith. Each revelation in this pool reflects a shift not just in the plot but in Lou herself, culminating in her return to high rock decades later as a woman at peace with her losses and her love for the land.