Mystery of the Black Diamonds by Phyllis A. Whitney, 1954, 1974.

Twelve-year-old Angie (Angela) Wetheral and her eleven-year-old brother Mark are visiting the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. They’re from New York, but their father is a mystery novelist, and he’s doing some research over the summer for a book that will take place in Colorado. As the kids explore the area and speculate about the murder that’s going to happen in their father’s new book, they meet Benjamin Ellington, an old timer who talks to them about the days when the gold and silver mines in the area were active. He tells the kids to call him Uncle Ben, and they talk about whether or not there’s any treasure still to be found in the area. They also meet Sam Springer, the park ranger, who worries about Uncle Ben exploring and digging in the hills by himself because he could get hurt and people wouldn’t know where to find him and help him. Uncle Ben says that Sam worries too much and that he knows the area well because he’s been digging out there for years.

Sam later tells the kids that Uncle Ben came to the area in 1889, when he was 15 years old. That means that Uncle Ben was born in 1874, and Angie says that means that he’s almost 70 years old now, which puts the date of this story in the early 1940s, during WWII, but they don’t talk about the war. Sam says that Uncle Ben actually struck it rich while he was in his teens and owned three or four mines. Apparently, Ben blew through most of his money pretty quickly, so he’s not that rich anymore. However, the kids are fascinated by the idea of finding gold or silver and striking it rich.

The reason why the family lives in New York is that it’s helpful for their father’s work. Besides writing mystery novels, he also writes shorter stories for magazines and does book reviews for various publishers, so it’s important for him to live close to the New York book publishers. Angie misses their old home in New Hampshire, where they had a view of the mountains. Colorado reminds her of her old home, and she wishes that they could stay there, so she could enjoy the beauties of nature and the outdoor life. Their father says that someday, when he’s saved enough money, they’ll be able to live anywhere they want, and he’ll take time away from his regular projects to work on a serious novel that he’s been thinking about writing for some time. Mark suggests to Angie that if they could strike it rich in the mountains, the family would have all the money they needed, they could live where they want, and their dad would have the time to write anything he wants.

The kids ask Uncle Ben about searching for treasure, and he gives them a piece of paper with a strange coded message that is supposed to be the map to the treasure. He tells the kids that if they want the treasure, they’ll have to work for it by figuring out how to read the message. Mark wonders why Uncle Ben would give them the key to a treasure when he could just go after it himself, but Uncle Ben says, “I’ve got all I need. I’ve had enough of treasure and the way it can ruin men’s lives.” Uncle Ben says that maybe the kids would do better with a treasure than most people, but he insists that the kids will have to work for whatever they find and refuses to give them any hints about what the message means.

Uncle Ben continues helping the children’s father with background for his mystery story. He suggests that Mr. Wetheral have a look at a nearby ghost town. Unfortunately, Uncle Ben is killed in a fall soon after. The children are nearby when he falls and call for help, but there is little that anyone can to for him. Just before he dies, he whispers to the children, “Black diamonds. Right where Abednego used to be.” It’s a reference to the coded message that he gave the children, one final hint at the treasure. His death leaves it entirely up to the children whether or not to go after it.

To the Wetherals’ surprise, they soon learn that Uncle Ben recently added Mark and Angie to his will, leaving them a house and some land in Colorado. The catch is that the house is in the old ghost town. Angie is hopeful that if they own a house in Colorado they might be able to stay there instead of going back to New York, but the question is whether or not they’d be willing to live in a ghost town.

The Wetheral family decides to go to the ghost town and camp out in their new house and see what it’s like. Mr. Wetheral thinks the ghost town would make a good setting for his book, and staying there will give him a chance to do some research and soak up the atmosphere. Plus, the family is going to have to decide exactly what they’re going to do with the house the kids have inherited.

Most of the ghost town is crumbling, but the house they’ve inherited appears to be in better condition than most. They even find some furniture they can use in a back room. As they explore the town, the kids have their mind on the treasure that Uncle Ben talked about. Most people think that was just a story he made up because he gave copies of the same treasure map message to other friends of his, and nobody has ever figured out what it’s supposed to mean. Mark and Angie think that there is more to the message than most people believe, and they’re determined to find the answers.

It turns out that the ghost town isn’t completely uninhabited, though. The Koblers and their granddaughter Juanita, who is nicknamed Jinx, also live there with their pet skunk. Grandpa Kobler is an old friend Uncle Ben’s, and he talks to the children about him and the old says of the ghost town, Blossom. He used to own the general store there, and his wife was once the schoolteacher, and they didn’t move away from Blossom when the others did. He’s aware of Uncle Ben’s “maps” and hints of treasure, but has no interest in treasure-hunting himself because he likes the life that he and his family are living and doesn’t want it to change. However, Angie can tell that Juanita/Jinx is unhappy and can’t understand why she doesn’t want to talk about her parents and where they are. Then, someone else shows up in Blossom, looking for the clues to Uncle Ben’s treasure. If there really is a treasure to find, can Mark and Angie find it first?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Themes, Spoilers, and My Reaction

It isn’t easy for the kids to get to know Juanita/Jinx because she has a prickly and defensive personality and doesn’t like to talk about her past. However, she gradually starts to bond with Mark and Angie because of their shared love of the town of Blossom. Eventually, she tells Angie that her parents died when she was very young. Her father was killed in a mining accident. He thought that there was still treasure worth finding in the old mine outside of town and tried to get at it even though Grandpa Kobler told him that it was dangerous and that there was probably nothing worth finding anyway. Juanita’s mother died of pneumonia soon after her husband’s death, leaving little Juanita to be raised by her grandparents. Juanita has a warm relationship with her grandfather, the only person who calls her by her real name. However, Juanita is convinced that her grandmother doesn’t love her and is only raising her out of a sense of duty. Juanita’s grandmother never approved of her mother, partly because her son’s early marriage is what stopped him from going to college. Juanita also thinks that her grandmother didn’t like her mother because she was Mexican, which is why Juanita has a Hispanic name. Her grandmother was the one who gave her the nickname “Jinx” because that’s what she would call her when she was chiding her for something, which seems to have happened all too often. Jinx often calls herself Jinx instead of Juanita because she’s trying to get away from her Mexican-sounding name and seem more American.

For part of the book, Jinx actively tries to sabotage the Mark and Angie in their treasure-hunting activities because she’s afraid that if they find treasure, everything in Blossom will change. She worries that other people will come to Blossom seeking treasure. If that happens, the town will be built up again, but that means destroying what’s already there. Also, Jinx fears the way other people will treat her. She doesn’t want other people to come into Blossom or to be sent away to school if her grandparents suddenly have the money to do it because she thinks that outsiders will always treat her badly and look down on her. Her grandmother has repeatedly told her that people look down on Mexicans, and Jinx thinks it’s true because some kids she met in Boulder were also mean to her and called her names. Angie tells her that it isn’t true that everyone hates Mexicans. The Wetheral family lived in Mexico one summer while her father was researching another book, and they liked it, and Angie still has a friend there. Angie realizes that the reason why Jinx’s behavior and attitude are so poisonous is that her grandmother has poisoned her mind because of her own twisted feelings. Angie declares that she’s going to have a word with Jinx’s grandmother about it, but Jinx stops her because she says that will just make her grandmother mad. She says that sometimes, when she’s especially well-behaved, her grandmother forgets that she’s half Mexican, and if anyone reminds her, she’ll just get angry all over again. It’s a pretty sick way to raise a vulnerable child who is isolated from other people who could give her a more balanced view of life and people’s feelings. Grandpa Kobler seems to realize this, which is why he wants Angie to be friends with Juanita and show her that there are different people in the world, including people who are willing to be friends. As Angie points out to Juanita, her grandparents are getting older, and someday, she will be an adult and they’ll be gone. Juanita is going to have to learn to get along in the wider world without them, and actually, dealing with strangers in the outside world might not be as bad as living full-time with her grandmother’s nasty attitude.

Some of Juanita’s feelings are resolved when Angie’s mother has a heart-to-heart talk with her about the things her grandmother has been telling her and her own opinions about herself. I agreed with Angie that some of the things her mother said to Juanita while challenging her attitudes were rather harsh, and I wouldn’t have said things like that, but Juanita does take what Mrs. Wetheral says to heart and realizes that she has as much reason to take some pride in herself and her background as anyone else. I didn’t like the part where Angie’s mother says that Juanita’s grandmother can’t help her opinions about Mexicans because that’s just the way she was raised and there’s nothing that can be done about it now. It seems to me that they’re discounting the idea of personal accountability. If Juanita’s grandmother can’t be responsible for her own mind and behavior, what can she be responsible for?

I know people can cling pretty hard to some weird ideas. One night, we took my grandmother out to dinner at a nice restaurant for a family celebration. My grandmother was actually really upset that the restaurant had given her so much food that she couldn’t eat it all, and she said that she was worried because her parents would never have approved of her not clearing her plate. She was genuinely upset about it, not just making an idle comment. It really bothered her. Now, I know that part of my grandmother’s youth took place during the Great Depression, when wasting anything was a sin, but at the time this incident took place, she was a widow who was over 80 years old. The Great Depression had been over for more than 60 years. I was her youngest grandchild, and I was an adult at this time. Her parents had been dead for longer than I had been alive. She was not only a parent herself, but she was also a grandparent and a great-grandparent. She was literally the oldest living member of our family, and nobody would have said a word about what she wanted to eat or not eat for dinner, but my grandmother just couldn’t get past the idea of what her parents told her years ago about always clearing her plate. It’s an odd thing to cling to, but admittedly, there are far more harmful ideas that people can’t bring themselves to give up because of stuff their parents said back in the day.

Mrs. Kobler has had years of living her own life and ample opportunity to work out her feelings, but I think that part of the reason she hasn’t is because there’s something else that’s preventing her. This theory is conjecture on my part because there’s never a point when Mrs. Kobler explicitly explains her thought processes, but although the book doesn’t really explain it, I think that her son’s death is probably the reason why Mrs. Kobler has been harboring so many negative attitudes and taking them out on Jinx. Although nobody actually says it, I suspect that Mrs. Kobler assigned blame to Jinx’s mother for her son’s death. If he hadn’t gotten married at a young age and went looking for a fabulous discovery to raise a fortune for his young family, he might have gone to college, gotten a good career, and still been alive. Even though the characters don’t explicitly say it, I think it’s logical. I further suspect that the really problematic part for Mrs. Kobler is that she needs to blame Jinx’s mother for what happened because, if she can’t, some part of her might blame herself for not stopping her son from doing what he did, and she can’t handle that. As long as she can tell herself (and Jinx) that her daughter-in-law was awful because she was Mexican and caused the downfall of her son, she won’t have to question why she wasn’t able to stop her son from dying. In her mind, I think Mrs. Kobler thinks that her son’s marriage was a terrible mistake that led to his early death, and by extension, her granddaughter really was a “jinx” because she came from that unlucky marriage. Some of Mrs. Kobler’s feelings get resolved later, when they discover that her son was right about the type of treasure he was seeking, even though he got killed pursuing it. A sudden disaster also makes Mrs. Kobler realize that there are many things that a person can’t control in life and that God’s will is taking her family in a direction she never anticipated. This book doesn’t really lecture about the subject of God and religion, but there are some Christian themes in the story.

All through the story, there is the theme of treasure – what is treasure, what do people do with treasure when they get it, and what are they willing to risk to get it? Early in the story, Uncle Ben talks about having lost his taste for treasure-hunting because he’s seen the way it ruins lives. It isn’t until the Wetheral family gets to Blossom and the children talk to Grandpa Kobler that they get the rest of the story about why Uncle Ben felt like that. After Uncle Ben dies, he is buried in the old cemetery in Blossom because that’s where his wife and young daughter are buried. They both died of diphtheria, and he blamed himself for them contracting the disease because they went to live in the big city after he got rich. Grandpa Kobler, who knew Uncle Ben back then tried to console him by saying that they could have caught that disease anywhere, not just in the city, but Uncle Ben still felt responsible. (Diphtheria is now a very rare disease in the US, thanks to the development of a vaccine to prevent it. It’s often given in a combination vaccine that also protects against tetanus and whooping cough, which is how I’ve received it. I was first given the vaccine when I was very young, and I still get my booster shots. I’d recommend it to anyone capable of receiving vaccines. I have never actually seen a person with any of those illnesses in my entire life, and I’m in my late 30s now.) The point is that money doesn’t buy love and happiness, and Uncle Ben came to the conclusion that the lifestyle his family lived when they were rich was unhealthy. He would rather have had his family back than the money from his mines.

Grandpa Kobler understands how Uncle Ben felt because, when Uncle Ben once asked him if he wanted a treasure, he said no. He was happy with the life he was living in Blossom, and he had enough money for his family to live comfortably. If he suddenly got rich, people would expect him to move to a bigger house in the city and start living a completely different life, and he realized that he wouldn’t be as happy doing that. In his youth, he saw the lives that other people lived after they got rich, and he didn’t like what he saw. Later, his son got killed while chasing a dream of treasure, which further emphasizes that there is a price for treasure-hunting, and sometimes, that price is too high. In the Wetheral family, Mark is the one who thinks that their lives would be better if they could find a fortune, but Angie points out that they don’t really need a fortune; they just need enough for their dad to feel comfortable taking the time to write the book that he wants to write and for them to have a home away from the big city, which is what they really want. There is the idea that having enough money is good, but having too much or trying too hard to acquire more can cause problems and complicate a person’s life.

Spoilers

Things are about to change in Blossom, in spite of what the people there want, and as Grandma Kobler concludes, it might be the will of God that they do. In the most dramatic part of the book, much of the town of Blossom is destroyed in a flash flood. Fortunately, all of the people and animals in the town survive, although the Koblers have a close brush with death. Juanita is in less danger because she’s on a picnic with Angie and her mother when the flood startes, and she is the first to realize the danger. At first, everyone is afraid that the Koblers drowned, but they eventually find Mrs. Kobler, just barely keeping her own head and her husband’s out of the water. During this time when they were almost killed, Mrs. Kobler admits that she had some revelations about many things, especially when she realized that she could depend on Juanita to come and help them. In spite of all of her nagging at Juanita, Juanita is bright and dependable and cares about her grandparents, even the grandmother who’s been making her life miserable. Mrs. Kobler never completely changes her mind about Mexicans, but she does change her mind about Juanita, giving her more respect than she did before. The book explains that she comes to realize that, while Mrs. Kobler disparaged Juanita as her mother’s daughter, she came to remember that she was her son’s daughter, too. It’s not as much as could be hoped for, but it’s a start. Mrs. Kobler also realizes that everything that’s happened is the will of God, there is nothing anyone could have done that would have changed the outcome, and God is leading her family in the direction He wants them to go, so she is just going to have to go with the flow (not exactly her words, but I think you catch my drift – ha, ha).

The secret of Uncle Ben’s treasure is also revealed. What he found wasn’t really “black diamonds” but something else that’s very valuable, the same mineral that Juanita’s father was looking for at the time he died. However, Juanita’s father was looking in the wrong part of the mine, which was why he got killed instead of finding what he was looking for. (Maybe he should have gone for his geology degree before going for the “treasure.” Just saying.) Uncle Ben was more experienced with mining and figured out the right place to look himself. It wasn’t until after Juanita’s father died that he came to realize the full value of what he had found, though. (It’s important that this story is set after WWII.) Uncle Ben’s lawyer reveals that, since samples of this mineral were sent to be analyzed, it has activated a part of Uncle Ben’s will that leaves the mine to Juanita Kobler, making her an heiress. Since the town of Blossom was destroyed in the flood, there’s nothing left to preserve that would prevent mining. Now that Juanita is an heiress, she’s going to have a much higher standing in the community, which might take care of some of the bullying she received at school in Boulder. The Wetherals also benefit from the discovery, as the mysterious stranger who came to town informs them that there’s a government finder’s fee for locating valuable mineral deposits.