I really like the part of the book where the main character, who has gotten all beat up and come to a dead end, is taken to an out-of-the-way place whose inhabitants have their act together and get along peacefully with each other and their environment. There is usually a really great bath involved:
- Aunt Beast in A Wrinkle In Time
- Medwyn in The Book of Three
- The Greeny Gorillas in Zahrah the Windseeker
A training montage early on and an oasis like this later in the book… that would make me so happy.
I recently read a similar scene in Glory Season by David Brin, you’re right, it is a recurring theme in a lot of books.
There’s one in a Narnia book — Dawn Treader? — where our heroes find hospitality in the home of some highly civilized giants, and there’s stuff about the joys of enormous towels after a hot soapy bath. But then it all goes south when they realize their hosts have ulterior (culinary) motives. Perhaps a subtrope? I am not going to search TVTropes for this right now. I am not, I tell you.