Her mother, who is estranged from Aileen's father, has moved back to the large family properties in tropical Colombia, staffed by local servants.
The mother is preoccupied with an architectural home improvement, a cantilevered wing that overhangs precariously over a deep gorge adjacent to the house.
Aileen, enthralled by the beauty of the tropical landscape, takes an early morning walk across the nearby river and wanders into a poor, rural hamlet.
When she returns to the house, Prue informs her that her mother, not finding her in bed, has "had a fit" and savagely berates her for causing the couple anxiety.
Aileen, furious and humiliated, begins to pummel Prue with her fists, then kicks her as she falls to the floor, uttering "the greatest scream of her life."
Literary critic Allen Hibbard praises "The Echo" for its "masterful regulation of the dramatic pace" and observes, "Bowles never tells how to feel about a story.
[3]"The Echo", much like Bowles's "Pages From Cold Point", involves a well-to-do, yet wholly dysfunctional family, whose members clash in post-colonial tropics.
In both stories homosexuality, the problematic nature of family ties, and expatriation are intimately intertwined…[In "The Echo"] Aileen's arrival forces a confrontation with her mother's sexual orientation and the form it has taken in her life.
Critic Hibbard observes: "The very construction of the house, its precarious perch above the abyss, becomes a symbol for the human condition as it evolves in the story…the gorge is a lurking force that outside which threatens all our ideas of order and stability.
"[6] While Aileen's mother is enthralled by the architectural innovation and jocularly compares it to a view over the Grand Canyon, her daughter avoids this portion of the house and stays in the old wing, which rests on solid ground.
According to literary critic Joyce Carol Oates, the story's climactic physical confrontation leads to Aileen's "liberation" from her mother and Prue.
[9] The denouement of "The Echo" depicts Aileen departing the estate on horseback, "cantilevered over the gorge", on the road towards Barranquilla and back to the United States.