Mystery Behind the Wall by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1973.
It’s summer vacation, and Benny doesn’t know what to do with himself because his friends have gone away for the summer. Mrs. MacGregor, the housekeeper, suggests that they invite a guest to the house to cure Benny’s loneliness. Her sister in Canada knows a boy who lives on a farm and is often lonely because they live a long way away from other people. The boy, called Rory (short for Roderick), is very lively and full of ideas, and he could use some company as much as Benny does. The kids are all eager to meet Rory and have him visit, so their grandfather calls Rory’s family and arranges for the visit.
The Alden kids are excited about Rory’s visit and start preparing the spare bedroom. They wonder if Rory will like it or not because the room seems old-fashioned and a little sad to them. The walls are covered with a wallpaper with roses, so the kids think that it must have been a girl’s room at one time. They notice an old photograph on the wall of a girl with her parents in front of the house, but the house looked different and smaller when the photograph was taken. There’s also a poster that says “Coolidge for President” in the window, dating the photograph to the 1920s, meaning that the picture is decades old. (The Aldens refer to that as being about 40 years yearly, dating the story to the 1960s.) Mrs. MacGregor puts a bright red bedspread on the bed to brighten the room up a bit, and the Aldens hope that Rory won’t mind that it still seems a bit old-fashioned.
Rory doesn’t mind the room at all. In fact, he is a bright and curious boy, who is interested in everything and notices little details. He notices the photograph in the room when he arrives, and he asks Grandfather Alden about it. Grandfather Alden explains that the people in the photograph are the Shaw family and that they owned the house before he bought it. The girl is named Stephanie, and she was the Shaws’ daughter. The Shaw family sold the house to Grandfather Alden when they moved to France, and Grandfather Alden built an addition onto the house, which is why it looks different now. The children wonder what happened to the Shaw family and to Stephanie, but Grandfather Alden says that he doesn’t know. They never wrote to him after they moved to France.
Another thing that Rory notices about the guest room is that it looks like the closet should be bigger than it actually is. Benny has the room next to Rory’s, and he has the idea making a hole in the backs of their closets so they can have a secret communication system between their rooms. Grandfather Alden doesn’t mind the project, so they cut holes in the backs of their closets. That’s when they discover that there is a secret, hidden space between the closets, and there’s something hidden in the space. They pull it out, and it’s a piece of cloth. They wonder what it’s for and why someone would hide it.
Grandfather Alden identifies the cloth as a coin case. He tells the kids a little more about Stephanie Shaw. He knows that Stephanie’s father was a very strict man. Her mother went to France ahead of the rest of the family, and her father was in charge of her in her mother’s absence. He had her tutored at home and didn’t let her play with other children, so she was often lonely. However, he allowed her to indulge in their shared hobby, which was coin collecting. The kids wonder what happened to the coins when Stephanie left for France. There are no coins in the coin case now. Professor Nichols, a coin collector who specialized in rare nickels, also helped Stephanie with her collection. He thought that Stephanie might have left her coin collection behind when she went to France, thinking that she might return one day, but Stephanie never did return. Professor Nichols would have asked Stephanie about it, but he didn’t have their address in France.
When the kids explore the hiding place in the closet further, they find an old notebook that turns out to be Stephanie’s journal from when she was 10 years old. Stephanie explains about her loneliness, and her coin collection. She talks about a puzzle that she created that will fool even her father, but the journal ends, so they don’t know what sort of puzzle Stephanie was talking about.
As the children explore Stephanie’s old room further, they find a clue that shows that Stephanie created a treasure hunt before she left for France, a treasure hunt that nobody has ever solved. The Boxcar Children and their new friend, Rory, begin playing along with Stephanie’s old treasure hunt, hoping that it will eventually lead to her missing coin collection.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
This is one of the early Boxcar Children books, written by the original author. Because the book was written decades ago, a child who was 10 years old in the 1920s would have been about 50 years old at the time the story is set, but the children are sad to learn that Shaw family, including young Stephanie, was killed in a railway accident in Europe, which is why none of them ever returned to solve the treasure hunt and reclaim the coin collection.
The Boxcar Children run into multiple dead-ends in the treasure hunt because things have changed in the decades since Stephanie created her treasure hunt, and clues have been lost. They almost give up, but Benny and Rory realize something that helps them solve the final riddle.
When they finally find the coin collection, they call Professor Nichols to come and look at it, and he tells them about some of the rare coins in the collection, like a 20 cent piece and an Indian head penny. He explains some general principles of coin collecting to the kids, like the fact that the oldest coins aren’t always the most valuable pieces in a collection. There are some very old and even ancient coins that are not quite as rare as some newer coins, and the rarity is what makes them valuable. He helps the children to start their own coin collections. This book could be a fun mystery to help get kids interested in a new hobby!
The Mystery of the Gulls by Phyllis Whitney, 1949.
Taffy Saunders and her mother are heading to Mackinac Island for the summer while Taffy’s father is in the hospital, recovering from a car accident. Taffy’s mother’s Aunt Martha has recently passed away, and she left the hotel she owned to Taffy’s mother. It’s a strange bequest because Aunt Martha hadn’t gotten along with her niece for years because she had disapproved of her marriage. There is also a condition on the inheritance. In order to retain ownership of the hotel, Taffy’s mother has to run it herself for a summer. Taffy thinks that it all sounds strange and mysterious, but her mother says that her aunt was an eccentric, and it was often difficult to understand why she did some of the things she did.
Taffy’s mother worries that something will go wrong over the summer that will prevent her from owning the hotel. It isn’t really that Taffy’s mother wants to be a hotel keeper, but since Taffy’s father’s accident, they’ve spent most of their money on medical bills. When he gets out of the hospital, he won’t be able to do his old job, which involved a lot of travel, so they’re going to have to settle down in a new city. Taffy is happy about living a more settled life than they used to live, but they’re going to need all the money they can get to buy a new home. Taffy’s mother is hoping to sell the hotel to pay their bills and buy a new home, but she can’t do that unless she can prove that she can manage the hotel first. Mrs. Saunders is hoping that her aunt’s long-time housekeeper, Mrs. Tuckerman, will help her make this summer a success, while Taffy is hoping that Mrs. Tuckerman’s daughter, Donna, will be a friend for her. Because their family has moved a lot, Taffy hasn’t had many opportunities to make and keep friends.
On the boat ride to Mackinac (which they point out is pronounced “Mackinaw” by locals), Taffy meets a boy about her age, David Marsh, who is going to Mackinac to visit his grandmother, and they talk about the sights to see on the island. There is an old fort on the island that is now a historic site for tourists, and David offers to show Taffy around. He tells her where his grandmother’s house is and says that she can come see him there, or he’ll come to the hotel, Sunset House, to see her.
When Taffy sees Sunset House, she thinks it’s charming. The hotel is a large, old house with turrets, cupolas, and a widow’s walk. Mackinac Island in general seems charming. Cars are not allowed on the island, so people get around with horses, carriages, and bicycles. Taffy’s mother talks about wanting to “wake this place up”, but Taffy thinks that the calm, sleepy atmosphere is right for the house and doesn’t want to disturb it. Since Taffy has moved a great deal with her parents because of her dad’s job, she has lived in many hotels and apartments, and she finds the old-fashioned and comfortable furniture at Sunset House to be homey. Taffy thinks that the home-like atmosphere of Sunset House is a nice change and that she will like it there. The room she shares with her mother is beautiful, also filled with old-fashioned furniture and a charming alcove with a lovely view.
It seems like Aunt Martha’s usual guests prefer the place quiet, too. The first guests that they meet are the Twig sisters, a pair of elderly ladies who are at first concerned about a new child in the house. Until Taffy arrived, the only child at Sunset House was Donna, who is described as a quiet child. Aunt Martha only rented rooms to adults with no children. Taffy learns that Donna, who is about her age, is usually never even allowed to bring other children to visit her. Taffy feels sorry for Donna and hopes that she will want to be friends as much as she does.
Besides Mrs. Tuckerman, the housekeeper, there is also a cook named Celeste. When Taffy and her mother first arrive, they are told that Celeste hasn’t prepared lunch because she’s been seeing “omens.” Apparently, this is something that she does periodically, and Mrs. Tuckerman thinks that, this time, it’s just because she’s upset about Mrs. Saunders arriving. There are three other people who also work in the kitchen, but they all seem pretty useless without Celeste’s direction. Fortunately, Mrs. Saunders is a woman of action, so she immediately takes charge of making sandwiches for lunch. To speed things up, she even offers to let guests come to the kitchen to make their own sandwiches, any kind they want, if they wish to. Although Mrs. Tuckerman isn’t sure that will work, lunch turns out fine. However, Taffy has a strange encounter with Celeste in the garden.
In the garden, Celeste asks Taffy what word the gulls are saying. Taffy did have the feeling before that the gulls are saying a word, and it sounds like the word “help” to her. Celeste says that’s what she thought, and she says that’s a sign that a storm is coming. Her fear of the bad storm coming is why she feels like she can’t cook, and it bothers her that nobody else seems to understand, implying that there is impending doom. Taffy shows Celeste a map that David drew to his grandmother’s house, which she is having trouble understanding. Celeste explains to her how to get to the house, and she also mentions a shortcut, but she warns Taffy not to take the shortcut after dark because it goes through a “goblin wood.”
Taffy meets Donna for the first time at lunch. Donna is a shy girl, but she is glad that Taffy is there because she has spent much of her time alone since children are not usually allowed at Sunset House. Taffy asks Donna about Celeste and what she means about the “goblin wood.” Donna explains that Celeste and her family have lived on Mackinac for a long time because they are descended from fur traders (this is why Celeste has a French name, although the book doesn’t mention it directly) and Native Americans (the book uses the word “Indians”). Because of this heritage, Celeste has a lot of superstitions about the island and the spirits that supposedly inhabit it. Taffy doesn’t believe in spirits, but she can’t resist taking the shortcut to David’s grandmother’s house, just to see what it’s like. She has an odd encounter in the woods with a Native American boy (called an “Indian”) wearing overalls, who refuses to speak to her and seems hostile toward her.
When Taffy sees David, she tells him everything about Celeste and her encounter in the “goblin wood.” David says that he’s taken the shortcut through the woods many times without a problem, and he never had any reason to think that it might be haunted. Taffy is a little insulted at his comment that maybe girls get scared easier than boys, and David explains that the boy might not have been as unfriendly as she thought because her imagination might just have been fueled by Celeste’s stories, so she was primed for something scary or sinister to happen. They reconsider that theory when the two of them walk back through the “goblin wood” and find a note left on a tree, telling her that she’s not wanted on the island and that her presence makes the “manito” angry. David says that the “manito” is one of the Native American gods or spirits who supposedly inhabit the island. (This is a real concept in Native American lore, but I’ve seen it spelled “manitou.”) Whoever wrote the note was trying to scare Taffy, but why?
David is intrigued by what Taffy has told him about Celeste and her “omens” and the “goblin wood”, the note left for Taffy, and the unfriendly boy in the overalls (who Taffy sees again, talking to Donna, when she and David try out his grandfather’s binoculars), and he says he is willing to help her investigate further. The two of them work out a code, where Taffy can hang things of different colors in the window of her bedroom to send him messages.
The mystery deepens when Taffy’s mother tells her that there are two vacancies in the hotel after Taffy heard Mrs. Tuckerman turn away a man who wanted a room. There is also a locked room off of Aunt Martha’s old office that Donna says no one is supposed to enter. She says that they can’t even find the key, that no one has seen it since Aunt Martha died. When Taffy talks to her mother, she says that the locked room is a library and that the boy in overalls she’s been seeing is named Henry and that he does odd jobs for the hotel. Taffy tells her mother that it seems like people don’t want them on the island, including Henry, Celeste, and Mrs. Tuckerman. Even Donna has been acting strangely. Even though she said that she was glad Taffy was there, she’s been strangely unfriendly, and she’s been telling her mother that Taffy is the unfriendly one! Taffy thinks that’s really unfair, but her mother thinks that it’s just because everyone is adjusting to the changes since Aunt Martha died. Donna isn’t used to being with other children, and Celeste and Mrs. Tuckerman may be worried about their jobs since the ownership of the hotel depends on how well Mrs. Saunders manages it this summer and what she plans to do with it when she takes full ownership. Taffy and her mother don’t even know what will happen to the hotel if Mrs. Saunders can’t prove that she can manage it well enough. Aunt Martha’s will deliberately keeps the alternate heir secret until the end of the summer.
This is only the beginning of the mysteries and puzzles. Taffy learns that the man Mrs. Tuckerman turned away from the hotel was actually an old friend of Aunt Martha who has worked in hotels in Asia and says he would like to own a hotel of his own. The storm that Celeste predicted comes, and a baby seagull crashes into the window of the Twigs’ room. Celeste thinks that’s another bad omen and that Taffy and her mother should leave. Then, someone leaves a bat skeleton in Miss Twig’s bed. Donna says that Aunt Martha used to collect things like that and that maybe her spirit put the skeleton in the bed because she’s not happy. Of course, Taffy doesn’t believe that. Too many living humans seem unhappy that she and her mother are there. Donna admits that Aunt Martha was originally going to leave the hotel to her mother before the two of them had a quarrel, and Aunt Martha changed her will. Whether Mrs. Tuckerman might still be the alternate heir to the hotel is still unknown. Donna thinks the alternate heir might be some bird society because Aunt Martha was an amateur naturalist with a fondness for birds. Could there be another heir who is hoping to drive Taffy and her mother away so they can have the hotel? Could Donna and her mother still be hoping that the hotel will come to them? Could Celeste or Henry be trying to drive them away for their own purposes?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. Like other Phyllis Whitney books, this book is something of a collector’s item now, and copies are not cheap through Amazon.
My Reaction and Spoilers
I’ve been to Mackinac Island before, when I was in my teens, and I didn’t know about the pronunciation until I read this book. I had even forgotten about the horses and carriages since I’ve been there (which might seem odd, but I only spent one day there and I was obsessed with the fudge), but Mackinac Island is still car-free today. Reading this book revived some old memories for me, and it makes me want to go back and spend more time there! I didn’t stay overnight while I was there last time, but there are plenty of hotels there, including ones that resemble the one in the story, with turrets, cupolas, and widow’s walks.
Culture and Folklore
The book mentions that there are many Native Americans living on Mackinac Island, but it doesn’t mention a specific tribe. Even though some of the spooky and ominous things that happen in the story appear to have their roots in Native American folklore and superstition, I’m not completely sure how accurate the descriptions of the folklore aspects are. From what I’ve read, it seems that manitous (or manitos) really are a part of Native American folklore in that region, but there are a couple of aspects of it in the story that I haven’t been able to verify. As a slight spoiler, we eventually learn that Aunt Martha used to collect not only animal skeletons but dead birds, which she would turn into taxidermy. Celeste didn’t think that this was fully respectful to the spirits of the creatures, although she did seem to think that Aunt Martha had some kind of special connection to the spirits of birds because she was so good with them, living, injured, or dead. Because the author, Phyllis A. Whitney spent her youth in Asia because of her father’s job, she also has a habit of introducing Asian elements to most of the books she wrote at some point. In this one, although the main focus is on aspects of Native American folklore, there is also an Asia folklore story about a Chinese gong in the hotel, which seems to have a connection to birds or winged creatures, and that complicates the situation. The effect is that Taffy sometimes feels like she is dealing with forces that she doesn’t understand, which adds some suspense, although she is also sure that there’s a person behind it all because she doesn’t really believe in all the folkloric superstitions and physical objects are being used for the strange things that are happening.
One thing that I like about Phyllis A. Whitney’s juvenile mysteries is that they do frequently include history and folklore of different places and people around the world, and they do seem generally well-researched and presented with empathy. This book and other she wrote were published in the middle of the 20th century, around the same time that other books I’ve read were also published. Some mid-20th century books for kids lean into racial or cultural stereotypes, but Whitney’s book often subvert that or show characters rethinking some of their preconceived notions. The book does use the word “Indian” instead of Native American, which isn’t preferred, but apart from that, Taffy’s attitudes and ability to look at things from someone else’s point of view are good. Taffy is characterized as a very imaginative girl, and one of the ways she uses her imagination is to picture what other people think or how they would feel about different things. At one point, David says that Celeste is crazy for all of her superstitious talk, but Taffy defends her, saying that she’s not crazy. Taffy doesn’t believe in Celeste’s superstitions, but she recognizes that Celeste believes and acts the way she does because she has spent her whole life being steeped in stories of the history of spirits. These stories don’t make sense to Taffy and David, but Taffy recognizes that they make sense to Celeste. Celeste is wrong about the spirits being responsible for everything weird that’s happening, but being wrong about something isn’t the same as being crazy.
Later in the story, the kids form a club for exploring the island and giving hotel guests tours of some of the scenic spots. Taffy, David, and Donna ask Henry to be their “Indian guide” for the tours, and Henry sarcastically asks if they’re expecting him to wear feathers. The others quickly reassure him that they’re not asking him to be the guide because they want him to put on a kitschy show for the tourists or anything embarrassing like that. They just think he would make the best guide because he knows the island better than the rest of them and all the history and stories of the island. They want to call him an “Indian guide” to emphasize his Native American heritage and provide a credential for his knowledge for the sake of the tourists, but they say they would still want him to be part of the tours even without that, just because they want to be friends and include him. This explanation satisfies Henry, and he joins their tour club. For those who would like to learn more about the history of real Native American life on Mackinac, I recommend the Biddle House Native American Museum.
Time Period and Atmosphere
This book is set contemporary to when it was written, the in late 1940s. Readers will notice that Taffy periodically mentions whether or not women are wearing slacks instead of skirts, and that’s because that was a modern fashion trend in her time. Taffy’s mother is very much a modern woman, and she wears slacks from the beginning. However, Taffy can see that many women who stay at Sunset House (although not all) are older and more old-fashioned women, who wear skirts, like the Twig sisters. At first Taffy worries about whether her mother is dressing appropriately for her new job, managing the hotel, but it works out fine.
Taffy and her mother have different views on the hotel from the beginning. Taffy thinks that the old-fashioned hotel is charming and that the quiet atmosphere really suits the place. However, Taffy’s mother thinks that the place seems depressing and wants to “wake it up” a little. Taffy worries that her mother’s attempts to “wake it up” might ruin the quietness and quaintness that appeals to their customers. This is one of the reasons why people who work at Sunset House are concerned about what Taffy’s mother plans to do with the hotel. On the one hand, they didn’t always like the way Aunt Martha did things, but Taffy’s mother is a newcomer, who might not understand which parts of the hotel’s atmosphere should be preserved.
It’s true that people often visit places like this hotel specifically for their atmosphere, and the kind of people who choose to stay at Sunset House are looking for exactly that quiet and quaint atmosphere. When she was alive, Aunt Martha cultivated that time of atmosphere and a client base who likes that. With Aunt Martha’s death, Sunset House is at a transition point, where the new ownership will set the tone for its future. I think Taffy is right that the old-fashioned charm of the house should remain because even modern people like to visit quaint and charming places that are very different from the places where they live the rest of the time, but at the time time, Aunt Martha’s ways were unnecessarily strict, and there is some room for relaxing the atmosphere without ruining the quaintness. Allowing families with children wouldn’t be bad, and when Taffy’s mother learns that Donna’s passion in life is dancing (something that Aunt Martha disapproved of), she arranges for Donna to do an evening show for the guests, which Donna and the guests love. A little live music and dancing is a way of adding some life to the old house without ruining the charm because Donna’s ballet and tap dance are also charming and tasteful.
For some context between Taffy’s mother and her Aunt Martha, I’d like to point out that, because this book takes place in the late 1940s, Taffy’s mother’s youthful visits to her aunt’s Mackinac Island hotel took place before her marriage, which was probably in the mid-1930s, given Taffy’s age. That means that she was there as a kid during the 1920s or early 1930s. Culturally, the 1920s and 1930s, post-WWI, was the beginning of the modern era, with flappers pushing the boundaries of women’s dress and behavior, and women needing to take on greater roles in working and supporting their families during the Great Depression and WWII. Taffy’s mother would have been growing up, coming of age, and marrying and having a child of her own during all of these changes, and I think this helps explain her practical, modern outlook on life and personal habits. (Remember, she wears slacks. Other women don’t, especially the older and more traditional ones.) As a member of the previous generation, Aunt Martha would have been a product of the late 19th century and early 20th century, which I think helps explain the Victorian/Edwardian style of her home and her apparent attitude that children should be seen and not heard, an attitude which seems to be shared by the Twig sisters. Not all Victorian era adults felt this way, and many parents genuinely loved and indulged their children whenever they could, but it seems like Aunt Martha clung to the strict aspects of Victorian upbringing. In fact, her resistance to listening to the needs of the young people is a central part of the mystery. In fact, it is the reason for the mystery, and we learn that Aunt Martha’s behavior wasn’t solely a matter of her upbringing but her own mercurial personality and moods.
Aunt Martha (Spoilers)
Understanding Aunt Martha is key to understanding the entire mystery because she is literally the one who set everything up. Although she is dead before the story begins, we actually do get more explanations of her thinking in her own words than almost anyone else, except for Celeste, because she left behind journals that explain everything. I got angry with Aunt Martha when I realized that her manipulation of everyone was deliberate and planned. Aunt Martha wasn’t just strict; she was controlling and vindictive. She expected everyone to consult her about everything going on in their lives and to do everything she said, just based on her say-so. Whenever anybody resisted that control because their lives were their business and not hers, she would get angry, and that’s when she would withdraw affection and support and renege on promises she had made, seeking to punish them for their resistance. As Taffy later observes, Aunt Martha was not a nice person, and in her journals, she even said that she distrusted people who were too nice and too liked by other people because she never was herself. Her hotel was charming, but she wasn’t.
The terms of Aunt Martha’s will were not so much designed to benefit someone as to punish them all. She didn’t leave the hotel to Mrs. Tuckerman, as she had originally planned, to punish her for not following her orders on how to raise Donna, even though Mrs. Tuckerman had previously let her control things for both her and Donna. Leaving the hotel to her niece wasn’t meant as a nice gesture, either. She thought her niece was an idiot whose decision to marry a man she didn’t approve of was a sign of ingratitude for all that she had done for her (whatever that was – apart from letting her visit during summer, we don’t know of anything else she did), so she expected that she would fail at managing the hotel and would be publicly embarrassed by the failure. Aunt Martha purposely set up a situation where some people would have to ensure that others would lose in order to “win” something because she liked the thought of them fighting among each other and having problems because of her.
While understanding other people’s thinking is important, I also think that it’s important to recognize that understanding does not equal approval. We can understand that Celeste’s superstitions make sense to her without believing that everything has a supernatural cause, and we can also understand why and how Aunt Martha decided to use her will to get back at everyone for defying her in some way while recognizing that everything she did was toxic and done out of malice. What eventually stops it all is the revelation of Aunt Martha’s thinking and the understanding of the motives of the people doing all the strange things at the hotel. Taffy and one other person realize that, in spite of Aunt Martha’s manipulation, there is still a way for everything to work out well for everyone, with no “losers” in the situation. Once they figure that out, they are able to explain things to the others and get them to cooperate.
There is a theme in the story about good people who do bad things, but that applies more to the people Aunt Martha manipulated than Aunt Martha herself. Aunt Martha was good to birds and helped them heal when they were injured, but she wasn’t so kind to her fellow human beings. Some of the characters in the story think that they have no choice but to do what they’re doing because of the way Aunt Martha set things up, and it’s very hurtful to Taffy because she thought they liked her and she liked them, yet they were plotting against her and her mother the whole time. Taffy’s mother says that they did like them and feel badly about what they did, that they just felt trapped. I was bothered by some of the characters talking about how likeable these characters were because I don’t like people letting others off the hook for doing harmful things just because they can be pleasant and charming sometimes. There are serious abusers who too frequently get off the hook for those reasons. Heck, people let Aunt Martha get away with many of the things she did because she was nice to birds and could be charming and helpful sometimes, but her journals explain detail how little she thought of other people and how she schemed to manipulate and control them. Her last act was to do something she knew would hurt and embarrass the people close to her and cause them problems with each other.
Fortunately, even though the offenders are otherwise nice and likable, the book doesn’t let them off the hook for their behavior. I was gratified that Taffy’s mother and other characters say that people need to take responsibility for their choices, even if they’re “all mixed up inside”, and that doing things that harm others can’t be excused. Even the miscreants just saying that they understand now that they were wrong about what they were thinking and doing doesn’t get them completely off the hook. Instead, the characters make the offenders each pick a way to punish themselves and make amends for the trouble they’ve caused, to show everyone that they’re genuinely sorry and really mean to make things right. I like it because, as Taffy points out, their behavior makes her wonder about their entire relationship. How much of their previous likeability was just an act while they were scheming against them behind their backs, and what is their relationship going to be now? Can they still be friends, or is that all over because they were plotting harm the entire time? The punishments they give themselves are a gesture to show that they really do regret what they did and that they are going to follow through on that regret and change for the better. Nobody gets away with causing problems just because they put on an outward show and come across as likeable. In the end, they’re not trying to insist on everyone letting them go because that’s what they want, and they’re not acting as though they’re entitled to anything or deserving of being treated as special exceptions. It’s just them, taking responsibility for themselves and owning their feelings and motivations, as Aunt Martha never fully did outside of her journals. As Mrs. Saunders says, “like anyone who does wrong, they’ll have to take their punishment.” Their willingness to do that and to admit that they were wrong and make amends is what paves the way to repairing their relationships with the others.
I was disappointed, though, that we don’t really get to see the miscreants explain themselves. The Taffy’s mother and others talk to them without Taffy being present, saying that they want to handle the matter privately, even though Taffy is the main character and the one who was investigating the mystery all along. It’s sort of weird that the main character was shut out of the final discussion. Because she’s not there, readers don’t get to “see” exactly what happened or hear the miscreants’ explanations in their own words. Taffy’s mother just tells her about it afterward, and that feels like a cheat. “Show” is generally better than “tell.”
A Touch of Cottagecore
I think this mystery story about a summer spent in an enchanting place, with an old-fashioned hotel and an island with horse-drawn carriages, might appeal to fans of the Cottagecore aesthetic. The kids in the story have some independence in where they go and what they do. Taffy is allowed to spend some time exploring the island with David, seeing the sights and enjoying the beauty of the island. The garden around the hotel has pretty flowers, and Taffy starts learning some of their names. She never had the opportunity before to learn much about flowers because she’s been living in hotels and apartments. She thinks that, when her family finally has their own house, she also wants her own garden with flowers.
Some characters in books make up their own special words which are only used in their story, and the word for this book is “exasper-maddening”, which Taffy and her father use to describe her mother’s behavior at times. The mother is a woman of action, which can be good when someone needs to take charge of the situation. However, she is also impulsive and stubborn, given to doing things as soon as she gets the notion to do them and sweeping everyone else along with her, and she also has a tendency to focus on whatever seizes her attention in the moment instead of what’s concerning someone else.
#4 The Secret in the Sand Castle by Laura Lee Hope (Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1988.
Before I begin, I’d like to acknowledge Sean Hagins, for supplying me with photos of this book! Usually, I take pictures of books myself, but I just couldn’t find a physical copy of this one. Sean is a big fan of the Bobbsey Twins, particularly the New Bobbsey Twins mysteries, and you can see some of his video reviews as well as videos about his photography work on his YouTube channel, SJHFoto. Thanks, Sean!
The two sets of Bobbsey Twins and their parents are spending a few weeks in an old house at Beachcliff Bay. It’s sort of a working vacation for their parents. Mr. Bobbsey owns a lumber yard, and he’s helping a local builder, Jim Reade, to either find some antique Victorian wooden gingerbread house trim or make new ones to match a home restoration project. Meanwhile, Mrs. Bobbsey is planning to write a travel article about the area for their local newspaper.
The house where the family will be staying is called the Wilson house, and it’s one of Mr Reade’s recent renovation projects. Flossie is the first in the family to go inside, and she is startled by what she thinks is a ghost. It turns out that it’s only the caretaker, Pete Smedley, taking the old dust sheets off the furniture. It’s not entirely reassuring because Pete says that there are stories about the old Wilson house being haunted by the ghosts of its former owners, who drowned in the nearby bay. He says that he knows when the ghosts have been there because they move things around and leave trails of water, seaweed, and seashells. Mr. Reade thinks that Pete’s stories are nonsense and that the strange things he’s observed are due to windows in the house being left open or something like that.
The inside of the Wilson house is as elaborate as the outside. The Bobbsey twins unpack their things and claim rooms for themselves upstairs. Flossie is quick to claim the biggest room with the best view for herself, and she asks Bert to help her move a mirror she likes into her room. They don’t have anything to hang the mirror, so they set it on Flossie’s bed. Strangely, they later find the mirror still on the bed but broken, and they don’t know how that happened.
Nan is curious about the Wilson family and the history of the house, so she and Freddie take a trip to the local library. There, Nan learns that the last two members of the Wilson family were a brother and sister, called Clay and Jennie. They were both artists, but they never made much money. Badly in need of money, they apparently robbed an armored car and stole gold bars. They tried to escape in a boat, but it was lost in a storm. The Wilsons apparently drowned, although their bodies were never found. The police thought they might have hidden the gold somewhere before getting on the boat, but nobody ever found the gold they stole.
Mr. Reade tells the children that his son, Jimmy, is entering a local sand castle contest, and the Bobbsey twins decide that they would like to enter the contest, too. Nan thinks they should try to build a replica of the Wilson house in sand. Unfortunately, Jimmy turns out to be a troublemaker, and it doesn’t look like he wants to be friends with the Bobbsey twins.
While the girls go to the store, Bert and Freddie decide to check out the old root cellar at the house, and someone traps them inside. The girls let them out when they get back. Then Flossie finds a secret passage and hidden stairs. Mr. Bobbsey says that it was once a servants’ entrance that had been sealed off. Later that night, a ghostly figure tries to enter Nan’s room! Could it have been Jimmy. playing a nasty prank, or is it someone looking for the lost gold? Could it even be a real ghost?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
From the beginning of the book, I had a favorite suspect. However, this is one of those mysteries where there is more than one person involved, and they’re not working together. In the end, I was right about my main suspect, but having a second person doing suspicious things made the mystery more interesting. The title is a little misleading because the story is really about the search for the hidden gold from the robbery, not about the sand castle contest. The sand castle contest is more of a side issue, although studying the design of the house to build the sand castle version leads the kids to the solution of the mystery.
Because this book is from the late 1980s, there are things in the story that were more a part of my childhood than the lives of 21st century children, like renting videotapes. I was about the age of Freddie and Flossie when this book was first published, so it’s a bit of a fun nostalgia trip for me, both because I read books in this series when I was young and because some of the things the kids do in these stories are similar to things I did at their age.
The Bobbsey Twins of Lakeport by Laura Lee Hope (Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1904, 1961.
Before I begin discussing the story, I need to explain that this story, I need to explain that, in the 1950s and 1960s, children’s series books from the Stratemeyer Syndicate that were still in print were rewritten and reprinted to update slang and cultural references and, importantly, to remove inappropriate racial language and stereotypes. This was the time of the Civil Rights Movement, and people were becoming more self-conscious about the language they were using and what they were teaching to children. The Bobbsey Twins was one of the series that was rewritten, and I was surprised by some of the things that appeared in the original printings of the first Bobbsey Twins series. As a kid, I was more familiar with The New Bobbsey Twins series, which was written in the 1980s and 1990s. The Bobbsey Twins was one of those series that has multiple sub-series, sort of like the various incarnations of Scooby-Doo cartoons, each one updated to fit the decades when they were written. The original Bobbsey Twins series was first written in the early 1900s, and the way it originally portrayed the black couple who work for the Bobbsey family was very problematic. I was really surprised. The edition that I’m describing below is the revised 1960s edition, with the problematic elements changed or removed.
The story begins with both sets of Bobbsey Twins – the older set, Nan and Bert, and the younger set, Freddie and Flossie – disassembling their old tree house because they’re planning to build a new one. Six-year-old Flossie mentions that a spooky old house near their school is also going to be torn down, and Freddie says that another kid at school claims that house is haunted. The children’s father says that they must be talking about the old Marden house. It used to a farmhouse, but the town has grown around it. Mr. Marden was a wealthy man who had once been ambassador to Great Britain, and he build the large house when he retired. Since then, the place has become disused and badly run-down, which is why the kids think it’s spooky and why it’s going to be torn down.
The children’s mother explains that she knows Mrs. Marden, who is the widow of the original Mr. Marden’s grandson. Mrs. Marden is now elderly, and she sold the old Marden house to the school when she went to live in a nursing home. Mrs. Bobbsey says that she hasn’t been to visit Mrs. Marden lately, she decides to pay her a visit that afternoon. The kids are still curious about whether the house could be haunted, and they ask their mother to ask Mrs. Marden about it. It doesn’t seem likely that the house is really haunted, even though it is old and spooky-looking. Danny, the kid at school who claims that he’s seen ghosts around the place, is known for playing mean tricks, so he’s not a reliable witness.
Bert suggests to the others that they could go take a look at the house themselves. When they get there, they see men surveying the property. The men say that, after the house is torn down, it will be replaced by an addition to the school. The kids ask the men if they’re worried about the house being haunted. One of the men says that he heard some strange sounds, but he thinks it was just a couple of local boys playing a prank. The men don’t think that there’s a real haunting there. The Bobbsey Twins want to see the inside of the house, but the surveyors tell them that they can’t go inside because the house is locked up to discourage vandals. The kids spend a little more time with the surveyors, helping to hold their equipment and seeing how it works. However, the children are still curious about the house and wish they could investigate it more.
Then, when their mother comes home from visiting Mrs. Marden, she tells them that there really is a mystery about that house. Mrs. Marden’s memory is failing her, but she knows that some valuable souvenirs from old Mr. Marden’s time as an ambassador are missing. One of them is a cameo surrounded by diamonds (the book defines what a cameo is for the benefit of kids who don’t know) and a collection of obsidional coins. (The book also explains what these coins are. The characters had to consult a book because even Mrs. Bobbsey doesn’t know. I hadn’t heard of them before, either, because I don’t know much about coin collecting. They’re basically improvised coins made during times of siege to pay off soldiers. They’re made from whatever materials the makers had at hand and are often irregular in shape. I love stories that explain interesting and unusual historical details!) Mrs. Marden knows that she hid these things somewhere in the old Marden house, but she just can’t remember where. Since the house is going to be torn down, there isn’t much time left to find them!
Mrs. Bobbsey gives the children permission to investigate and tells them that the principal at their school has the keys to the house. She thinks that the principal might let the kids into the house if they explain that they want to retrieve something for Mrs. Marden. The school principal is surprisingly agreeable to the idea of the children poking around the old house and gives them the key, but Danny overhears their conversation and tries to convince them again that the house is haunted.
When the twins and a couple of their friends go inside the house, there isn’t much there. All the furniture has already been cleared out of the house, and it doesn’t seem to leave many possible hiding places to search. The only thing Mrs. Marden seems able to remember about the hiding place is that it has something to do with a hearth, but there are many fireplaces in the old house.
It turns out that the old house is hiding many secrets! There are secret passages and hidden trap doors. The kids also discover that someone is sneaking around the old house, someone who seems to know its secrets. Could it be Danny, playing ghost to scare them, or could it be someone who’s after the same treasure the children are trying to find?
The revised edition of the book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction and Spoilers
New vs. Old Editions
I have trouble talking about the original edition of this book because I haven’t been able to find it. I’m not sure if that’s because the racial language was just too objectionable for anyone to want to put a copy online, even though it should be public domain now. Although, it could be that it is online but I just don’t recognize it because it’s called something different. Some of the revised Stratemeyer Syndicate books are so different from their originals that they’re barely recognizable as being the same story. Some original stories were considered so outdated that they were completely rewritten. I know something about the level of racial language and stereotypes in the Bobbsey Twins because I did find an older edition of the next book in the series, and I’ve read articles about some of the other books I haven’t read yet.
Even though this printing doesn’t contain the problematic racial language and stereotypes of the original, there were things some of the characters said that I still didn’t like. Mr. Bobbsey calls Flossie “my little fat fairy” as a term of endearment, but it sounds a little rude to me to call attention to her being “fat.” Flossie doesn’t seem to mind, probably partly because she’s only 6 years old and not at the stage where girls really start worrying about their appearance, but some girls can really be affected by being called “fat”, especially if there’s a lot of teasing at school aimed at “fat” people. The father similarly calls Freddie his “little fat fireman” because Freddie wants to be a fireman. Freddie doesn’t seem to mind it, either, but I still feel like the “fat” part is just unnecessary. If he’s going to give nicknames, why not just say “my fairy princess” or “little fireman”, sticking to words with positive connotations, without adding an extra, unnecessary word that can easily turn negative? I’m not fond of teasing, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to teach kids to tease or set them up for teasing later.
The Mystery
One thing that makes this story a little different from other books in the Stratemeyer Syndicate series is that the children get some adult help with the mystery. Usually, the children in Stratemeyer Syndicate series try to do everything themselves, but when the kids realize that there is a strange adult sneaking around the house and trying to scare them away, they tell their school principal, and he comes to investigate with them. However, even when the adults realize that there’s some strange adult lurking around and trying to scare the kids, nobody stops the kids from continuing to investigate the house.
There are various other little adventures that happen throughout the book, like Freddie getting lost in a department store and adopting a cat he names Snoop and the boys camping out with a friend but ending the trip when it starts to rain too hard. However, these incidents also help the kids to gather some additional clues to the main mystery.
The identity of the adult sneaking around the house would be impossible for readers to guess because we don’t really get to meet him until later. The kids are the ones who find the treasure, although it happens by accident. I would have liked it better if they had reasoned it out, but it’s still a pretty good kids’ mystery story.
Philip Mannering is spending part of his summer holidays at the home of one of his teachers, doing some extra studying, which is a bit depressing. He has fallen behind in school because he recently suffered from Scarlet Fever and Measles, and he is trying to catch up. He’s not the only boy studying at the teacher’s home, but he isn’t really friends with the others.
One day, he’s doing some studying on the hillside and hears a strange voice telling him to shut the door and not whistle. There is no door on the hillside, and he wasn’t whistling. Philip is very confused until he realizes that the voice is coming from a big, white parrot sitting in a tree. Then, he hears a child’s voice calling the parrot from the garden of the teacher’s house. Philip is happy, thinking that another boy has joined the study group, but it turns out that he’s only half right.
The voice in the garden belongs to Lucy-Ann Trent, who isn’t a student and isn’t there to study. Her brother, Jack, is the one who needs to catch up in school because he never focuses on his studies. Jack has only one interest in life, and that’s birds. Jack owns the parrot, Kiki, and wants to be an ornithologist when he grows up. He is bright but disinterested in anything that isn’t related to his chosen field. Lucy-Ann is only there to spend time with him and keep him company while he gets extra tutoring. The two of them are orphans. They don’t remember their parents because they died in a plane crash when the children were very small. Most of the time, they live at boarding school, which is why they don’t spend as much time together as they like. Usually, during their holidays, they live with a fussy uncle, which is why the parrot is always barking orders at the children.
Philip also usually lives with an aunt and uncle when he’s not at school. His father is dead. His mother is still alive, but she spends most of the time working at her art agency. He also has a sister named Dinah, but they don’t usually get along. Philip is surprised at how well Jack and Lucy-Ann get along with each other because he’s always fighting with his sister, who has a temper. (Although, admittedly, he does push Dinah to lose her temper.) Strangely, Philip finds himself wishing that Dinah were also there because, when he becomes friends with Jack and Lucy-Ann, it occurs to him that she would nicely round out the group.
Philip, Jack, and Lucy-Ann become friends by bonding over their shared love of animals. Philip likes the parrot and tells Jack and Lucy-Ann that they would probably like his aunt and uncle’s house because they live by the sea, and there are many sea birds in the area. Philip doesn’t know much about birds in general, but he likes collecting various small pets, including mice and caterpillars. The teacher isn’t too happy about these animals because they disrupt study sessions.
Then, Jack and Lucy-Ann get a letter saying that they’re going to have to continue staying with the teacher through the rest of the summer because their uncle has broken his leg and can’t take them back. The children aren’t happy about that and neither is the teacher because he had other plans after the summer tutoring session ended, even though the uncle has provided a generous check for the children’s care.
Then, Philip has a wonderful idea: maybe Jack and Lucy-Ann can come visit him and his sister at his aunt and uncle’s house. Dinah has written to him that she’s bored and lonely and misses him, even though they usually fight. She would like the company, and Philip knows that his aunt and uncle could use the money the children’s uncle is willing to offer for their boarding. Jack and Lucy-Ann like that idea, but they’re not sure that their uncle and teacher would agree to let them go because they don’t know Philip’s aunt and uncle, and they think maybe Philip’s aunt and uncle wouldn’t want two strange children staying with them. The children know their plan would be best for everyone, but since they’re not sure that they can persuade the adults, they take the attitude that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission and plot for Jack and Lucy-Ann to run away and join Philip on the train home. Jack and Lucy-Ann secretly send their trunks to the train station along with Philip’s and tell the teacher that they’re just going down to the station to say goodbye to Philip when he goes. Then, they quietly buy their train tickets and leave.
When the children arrive at Philip’s home, Aunt Polly is irritated because she isn’t prepared for unexpected guests. There are no rooms or beds for them, and she says that they can’t stay. However, she is surprisingly won over by Kiki, who says, “Poor Polly!” over and over in a sad tone. Not knowing that Kiki is also sometimes called Polly, Aunt Polly thinks that the bird knows her name. She often feels overworked and rarely gets any sympathy, so she appreciates this gesture from Kiki, who repeats the phrase more often, seeing that it pleases Aunt Polly. Aunt Polly is also charmed that Polly tells people to get a handkerchief when they sniffle or sneeze because she’s always saying that to Dinah. When she telephones the children’s teacher to discuss the situation and learns about the fee the children’s uncle is willing to pay for caring for the children, she decides that maybe the children can stay after all. The relieved teacher promises to endorse the check over to her.
Aunt Polly is relieved to get the extra money, and she reveals to the children that she’s been very worried about expenses because Philip and Dinah’s mother has been ill and hasn’t been able to send the money she usually sends from her job. Her doctor says that she’s run-down and needs a rest, but her job is an important source of money to the whole family. Everyone is relying on her, but since she hasn’t been able to send her usual support money for the children, Aunt Polly is worried about how she will afford the children’s school fees. Philip bravely says that he’s willing to quit school and get a job instead to help out the family, but Aunt Polly says he’s still too young. Philip has wished before that he was old enough to be the man of the family and provide for his mother. His uncle isn’t much help with money and doesn’t pay attention to family expenses, too absorbed in his academic work. Aunt Polly says that the money she’ll get from boarding the Trent children will help out.
Philip says that part of the trouble is that the house where they live is really too large. About half the house is crumbling into ruins from neglect, and the other half is really too big for Aunt Polly to maintain. Aunt Polly agrees but says that moving would be difficult because few people would want a house like this one, crumbling and located in a rather lonely spot along the coast. Besides, the children’s uncle loves it because he knows all the history of the area, and he wouldn’t want to leave. Philip thinks the only thing that will really help is when he and Dinah are old enough to get jobs. Then, the two of them will be able to help their mother afford a place for three of them.
Philip’s aunt and uncle have a gloomy man named Joe working for them, and he tells the children that the tower room where the boys will sleep on an old mattress (a prospect that seems adventurous to them instead of an inconvenience) isn’t a good room because it’s the only room where they can see the Isle of Gloom. He says that bad things are associated with the Isle of Gloom because bad people who did terrible things lived there. Jack asks Philip about the Isle of Gloom. Philip says that it’s difficult to see, even from the tower room, and it’s always covered in mist. Nobody lives there now. Jack thinks it sounds great because the birds on the island have probably never seen people before and won’t be afraid of them, so he could get some amazing pictures. He thinks maybe he’ll even find some rare birds. Philip says that he and Dinah have never been there before themselves, and he’s not sure whether there are birds there or not.
Staying at the house by the sea isn’t easy. All of the children are expected to help with the chores. There is no electricity, and they use oil lamps that need to be cleaned. The water has to be pumped from a well. Still, Jack and Lucy-Ann think that it’s just part of the adventure. They enjoy going swimming and fishing with Philip and Dinah, and Jack has fun bird-watching, but Joe the handyman is always spying on them and acting creepy. He keeps telling the children spooky stories about things lurking in the dark. For some reason, Joe tries to discourage the children from exploring the area or going out in a boat, but they soon make an interesting discovery.
While the children are exploring a cave, Philip teases Dinah, and she hits him. He stumbles back and ends up in a hidden tunnel. Philip and Jack explore the tunnel and discover that it leads to some carved stone steps and trapdoor that leads up to a storeroom that’s part of the cellars at the house. Philip says that he never knew this part of the cellar existed. The boys discover that the door to the storeroom is usually hidden by boxes, but Joe has the key and comes in. Kiki, who is with Jack as usual, makes some sounds that terrify Joe, who thinks that there are strange and spooky things in the cellar. The boys think that it’s hilarious that Joe got scared when he’s always trying to scare them. They steal the key that Joe left in the door so they can come and go whenever they like, but they wonder why Joe even hides the door to the storeroom in the first place. Philip is sure that even his aunt doesn’t know about that storeroom, or she would have mentioned it before.
Joe is definitely doing something suspicious, going out at night in a boat, fearful that the children will find out what he’s doing. The children make friends with a nice man named Bill, who is staying in an old shack nearby. Bill says that he’s there for bird-watching, but he doesn’t seem to know that much about birds or talk about them as much as Jack does. Bill has a boat and takes the children out sailing, but he doesn’t want to take them to the island and warns them to be careful of Joe. Does Bill know something the children don’t, or does he have some dangerous secrets of his own?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It was first published in Britain, and some US copies use the title Mystery Island instead. The book was made into a movie in the 1980s, and you can see it on YouTube. The movie has John Rhys-Davies as one of the villains.
My Reaction
First, I’d like to get it off my chest that I didn’t like many of the family relationships throughout the book. Aunt Polly’s marriage is a little disturbing because she doesn’t have enough money to run the household, but her husband not only says that he has none to give her and wouldn’t give her any even if he did have money. He doesn’t seem to care about the welfare of either Polly, who is eventually revealed to have a heart condition, or the children in his care. He buries himself in his study most of the time and has almost no idea of what’s going on in the rest of the house or even who’s there. He’s not just obsessed with his studies, but at times, it seems like he’s deliberately hostile toward everyone else, including his wife, like their existence in the house is a terrible inconvenience to him.
I didn’t like the way Philip and Dinah were portrayed as always fighting physically in the book. Admittedly, my brother and I got into physical fights when we were little, but Dinah is twelve years old, and Philip is older than she is. Both of them seem to be too old to be acting the way they do in the story. Dinah is very emotional and has a hair-trigger temper, and Philip, knowing this, intentionally baits her into losing his temper. He likes to put creepy-crawly creatures on her or act like he’s going to, knowing she doesn’t like it and that she’ll react, and then he’s not happy when she lashes out and hits him. While Dinah shouldn’t react by hurting people physically, I could sort of understand it if she constantly has to put up with this from Philip. Living with someone who is always baiting you and escalating his behavior until you break would probably leave anyone broken in the end, and I can’t help but think that Dinah’s emotions would stabilize more if she didn’t have to deal with someone always trying to throw her off balance. Maybe she’d still be an emotional person, but I notice that it’s particularly Philip who gets her to fight physically while nobody else does because they don’t bait her into it. I found that sibling relationship kind of disturbing because Philip seems to know exactly what he’s doing, and as I said, he’s too old to be doing this stuff innocently.
Jack and Lucy-Ann seem to have a more fond sibling relationship. Lucy-Ann sometimes seems a little clingy with Jack, but I think that might be because the children are orphans and are not fond of their stern uncle, so they don’t really have anybody else to be close to except each other.
My copy of the book is one of the later editions that had some of the names and language changed to remove racially-problematic aspects of the story. In the original version of the book, the sinister handyman was a black man called Jo-Jo, and his race was unduly emphasized. I prefer the version where he’s just a weird guy named Joe.
The mystery isn’t bad. I knew right away that Joe was suspicious because he kept acting suspiciously, but the mystery is one of those type where it’s not so much about “whodunnit” as about “What is this person doing?” Readers know that Joe is up to something, but it isn’t clear for much of the book what it is. I had a couple of ideas early in the story, but neither was right.
Bill is also an interesting addition to the story. For part of the book, he looks a little suspicious because readers can tell that he’s not the bird-watcher he pretends to be, but he doesn’t seem to be allied with Joe. Bill is actually a good character, although he’s not what he appears to be, and he becomes one of the important characters in other books in the series.
Mystery at Kittiwake Bay by Joyce A. Stengel, 2001.
Cassie Hartt has only recently moved to Kittiwake Bay, Maine with her mother and brother following her parents’ divorce. Her mother is a nurse, and she has found a job at the local hospital, which is actually 30 miles away from the little town where they were able to find a house. Because of her mother’s long commute, Cassie will need to look after her 7-year-old brother, Danny. Soon after arriving, she meets a nice boy named Marc Nolan, who is a little older than she is and loves boats, and a girl name Liz Painter, who likes photography and walks her cat on a leash. Liz is the one who introduces Cassie and Danny to the Beachcombers Club, which is a group for kids Danny’s age who like to go swimming and camping and the kids who hang out at the Sand Shack coffee shop. Marc is one of the Sand Shack kids, and so is a boy named Ryan Jerrick, who is Liz’s crush. Cassie is glad to be making friends and starting to get settled into her new home, but soon, there are complications.
One evening, on her way home from the grocery store with her dog, Sam (short for Samson), Cassie sees some mysterious figures sneaking around in the dark. She doesn’t know who they are, but the way they’re sneaking around worries her. She later learns that there have been robberies in the area.
Cassie develops a fascination for the large house that she saw on a cliff near the ocean, and Marc and Ryan tell her that’s a senior citizens’ residence called Waterview Manor. Both of them work there part time. Liz says that the house wasn’t always a senior citizens’ residence and that there are a lot of weird stories about the place. It was built by a rich man before the Civil War, but it became property of the town in the 1950s. One of the stories about the place is that it was once part of the Underground Railroad helping escaped slaves. The boys say that a woman named Mrs. Wentworth says that her grandfather was one of the people helping escaped slaves. There’s also a story about Captain Kidd hiding his treasure somewhere around the old house, although Ryan doesn’t believe any of these stories. He thinks Mrs. Wentworth just tells tall tales. Cassie thinks that she might like to volunteer at the house, like the boys did before they started working there as employees. If her little brother joins the Beachcombers Club, she’ll have some free time for volunteer work.
When Cassie goes to Waterview Manor to sign up, she witnesses an argument between Ryan and Mrs. Wentworth, who is confined to a wheelchair. Ryan was being disrespectful because Mrs. Wentworth was telling one of her stories about the history of the town that Ryan thinks is outlandish, and Mrs. Wentworth was telling him off. Ryan doesn’t actually like working at Waterview, but he has to keep his job because he needs the money. Cassie thinks he’s arrogant. Ryan has no patience for the fetching and carrying he has to do for the older people, and he thinks that Mrs. Wentworth’s mind is going. Cassie thinks that Mrs. Wentworth sounds like she still has her faculties and is sympathetic when Mrs. Wentworth laments about not being able to do things she used to do because her hands and feet won’t obey her anymore. Mrs. Wentworth is physically feeble these days, but she knows what she’s talking about when it comes to local history.
After she signs up to volunteer, Cassie can’t resist a peek into the forbidden East Wing of the house, and she meets Marc there. They both admit that they’re curious about the stories of treasure in the house. Unlike Ryan, Marc believes Mrs. Wentworth’s stories, and Cassie can’t wait to hear more!
Mrs. Wentworth used to be a history teacher, and she does know more about local history than Ryan gives her credit. She tells Cassie how her grandfather used to be a conductor on the Underground Railroad and how his friend, Mr. Palmer, who was the original owner of Waterview Manor, was a stationmaster, which meant that he hosted and hid the escaping slaves that Mrs. Wentworth’s grandfather conducted to him. Mrs. Wentworth’s grandfather told her about a secret room where they used to hide people and a secret tunnel that would take them to the landing site for the boat that would smuggle the runaways to Canada. When Cassie asks her about the story about Captain Kidd hiding his treasure somewhere in the area, Mrs. Wentworth said that her grandfather always believed he did, although Captain Kidd was much older than both her grandfather and the Manor. She explains a little about the life story of Captain Kidd and how it seems that most of his treasure was never found.
However, they soon have a more modern mystery on their hands. Whoever has been stealing things in the area recently seems to have started taking things from Waterview Manor. First, an expensive chess set belonging to one of residents disappears. Then, some jewelry and a coin collection disappear. Then, someone steals Mrs. Wentworth’s beloved lavaliere necklace, a special present from her late husband. For someone to both know about the residents’ valuables and to have access to them, the thief must be somebody working at the Manor! Who, could it be? Is it grumpy Ryan, who needs money? Is it John, another employee, who often acts a little strange? Could it even be helpful Marc, who seems nice but is often lurking around areas where both he and Cassie aren’t supposed to be? Or is it someone else Cassie wouldn’t even think to suspect?
The mysteries of the past start mingling with the mysteries of the present. Cassie sees signal lights from the tower of the old house that remind her of of the signals Mrs. Wentworth said the Underground Railroad used. Is someone now using them for a different purpose?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
The Underground Railroad is a popular subject in US children’s books. There is something compelling about people sneaking around on clandestine missions and hiding in secret rooms and secrets passages, and since these things were used in the real life Underground Railroad, they make convenient devices for US children’s books with some historical flavor. The former Underground Railroad secret passage in Waterview Manor does play a role in this story. Someone is using it for a new purpose, just like they’re using signals from the tower.
The purpose of the Underground Railroad secret tunnel in the story is also to show that Mrs. Wentworth knows what she’s taking about when she tells her stories about local history. Ryan tries to discount her stories because some of them sound a little far-fetched and dramatic and because he thinks scornfully of the old people he serves in his job. Ryan has a negative attitude and looks at the elderly as being senile and demanding. Cassie feels differently because she has more empathy and, perhaps, because her mother is a nurse, which may make her more aware of the human condition and more comfortable helping other people. She seems to understand what Mrs. Wentworth means when she talks about finding it frustrating that she can’t do things she used to do, and she says that she agrees with Mrs. Wentworth when she says that she likes keeping her hair long even though a nurse at the Manor says it would be easier to care for if she cut it shorter. The nurse is probably thinking that short hair would be easier on those who might have to help Mrs. Wentworth wash and brush it, but Cassie understands when Mrs. Wentworth explains why she likes her hair long. Cassie thinks the people who live at Waterview Manor are interesting, and she admits to her mother that she likes to pretend that they’re her grandparents. She is fascinated by Mrs. Wentworth’s stories, and because she and Marc believe what she says, they are able to get to the bottom of the mysteries surrounding the Manor.
I was pretty sure I knew who at least one of the thieves was, and I was also pretty sure I knew why. I was correct in my first guess, but there were enough red herrings along the way to give me some doubts, so there was plenty of suspense in the story. One of them wasn’t fully aware of what he was getting involved with at first, but he does bear responsibility for what he did even after he knew.
This book also deals with the subject of divorce and how it affects families and children. Books like this were once rare, but they have been very common staples of children’s literature since the late 20th century, reflecting changes in American society and a growing willingness to discuss difficult topics with children. Moving to a new state and starting over after the divorce wasn’t easy for Cassie, her mother, and her brother. Cassie quickly becomes interested in the history of her new town, and it doesn’t take her long to find some new friends and a volunteer activity to keep her occupied. However, other aspects of the changes in her life and family will take longer to get used to. Her mother has to work long hours with a long commute, so Cassie frequently has to be responsible for her younger brother when he’s not at activities of his own, and her mother often isn’t home for Cassie to discuss things with her.
There is also some tension between Cassie and her brother because the divorce has changed their relationship with each other. Because Cassie has become more of a caregiver to Danny because her mother has to work, she has to make arrangements for Danny before she can do anything on her own, which sometimes makes things awkward for her. Danny also becomes jealous because Cassie does have more ability to do things on her own than he does and because she makes friends and settles into their new town more easily than he does.
One part of this book that I hated was when Danny intentionally left Sam outside alone to spite Cassie, and Sam is poisoned by one of the villains and nearly dies. Cassie is very upset with Danny because of this incident, understandably so, but I didn’t like it that the other characters were pressuring her to be okay with Danny and forgive him too quickly. They do this because Danny is young, they think that he left the dog out by accident, and Danny feels really badly about almost getting the dog killed. Cassie knows, although Danny doesn’t initially admit it, that Danny left the dog outside on purpose. That purposefulness maliciousness is not a thing that I think should be too easily forgiven, especially not because someone just “feels bad.” Let’s insist on a little empathy here, Danny. Cassie feels bad because you almost got her dog killed. Sam really feels bad because he’s the one who almost died! Maybe your feelings shouldn’t be given first priority here, since you were the one who caused the harm. Sam is a dependent animal. Under no circumstances should animal abuse be excused, and leaving a dependent animal outside alone to be lost, hit by a car, or yes, harmed by some other malicious person is abusive. Danny should not be given a pass for malicious behavior or animal abuse just because he “feels bad.”
Giving people that type of excuse for malice and abuse just encourages more of it in real life because the person finds that there are no consequences for their actions and it gets them the forgiveness and attention they want, so they keep doing it. It’s a dangerous thing to allow. The story makes it clear that Danny was acting out on bad feelings that he already had about the divorce and feeling neglected by both his mother and Cassie, but I think it’s important to make it clear to him that, even if he’s “feeling bad”, that does not give him the right to hurt other people or animals. Nobody has the right to hurt others just because they’ve got mixed-up feelings. I hate it that the other characters don’t seem to feel that way.
The story ends happily when Danny tries to make it up to Cassie by investigating the situation and Cassie rescues him from the bad guys. They have a heart-to-heart talk that makes Cassie realize how important Danny is to her and that she has to make time for paying attention to him and supporting him more during this difficult time. Still, I feel very strongly that the story and the other characters should emphasize to Danny that causing hurt because you feel hurt is wrong and damaging to relationships. The way the other characters tried to make Cassie feel bad about the situation also really felt like gaslighting. She had a real and serious reason for being angry with her brother, and it just made me really angry when they acted like she was the bad one because Danny was “feeling bad” and she wanted him to be accountable for his actions. He knew what he was doing, and he should have known it was dangerous to Sam, even if he didn’t know that someone was going to deliberately try to kill the dog.
I know that Danny has some emotional issues that need to be addressed, but I’m saying that he also has some behavior issues that also need to be addressed. There are helpful ways to deal with emotions and destructive ways to deal with emotions. Danny is not too young to understand the consequences of his actions and to accept them. I don’t think that learning that it can take awhile to regain trust after betraying someone’s trust is also an unbearable lesson. In fact, I’d call it a life skill. If it helps him to develop more empathy and consider other people and the consequences of his actions before he lashes out, it is worth it.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to relive it.
Santayana
It’s an appropriate quote for the story, which is about memory and a repeated wrong that has led to a seemingly endless cycle of violence. The story is framed as having been told to the author by the boy who actually had this frightening adventure.
Kenny Huldorf is unhappy when his parents decide to move the family from California to Rhode Island. Kenny was happy in California, the weather was much better there, and the streets and buildings in Rhode Island all seem small and old. The house they move into is called the Daniel Stillwell House, and it was built in 1789. Right from the beginning, the house gives Kenny a strange feeling, like there’s something or someone there when there shouldn’t be anyone or anything.
Kenny starts to feel better when his parents give him the big, renovated room with the private bathroom in the attic of the house. He likes that room, but there are two smaller rooms off the attic that haven’t been renovated, and they give Kenny a strange feeling. His parents think they were probably old servants’ quarters. One of them has a stain on the floor that makes Kenny think of death, and even more frightening, Kenny gets an odd sense that, somehow, it’s a death he may be responsible for. For a time, Kenny tries to tell himself that it’s nothing but an old stain and occupies himself with unpacking and getting settled. Since school hasn’t started yet, Kenny gets bored and does some exploring of the area. He starts wondering about the history of the town and the house.
Then, one night, Kenny hears a strange sound from the room with the stain. When he goes to investigate, he sees a pair of ghostly, glowing hands reaching up out of the stain on the floor. The hands pull the rest of the ghostly person out of the floor, and Kenny can see that it’s the figure of a boy. When the boy tries to reach out to him, Kenny reacts defensively, and the ghost boy seems frightened and vanishes. The next day, Kenny asks his parents if they believe in ghosts. His father says he doesn’t but that Providence is a very old town and a lot of things have happened there over the years. His mother later says that she doesn’t really believe in ghosts either, but she believes that places have memories. Kenny’s parents conclusions seem to be that Kenny is sensing the general history of the town, but Kenny feels that it’s something more specific than that, that the ghost he saw is a specific person from a specific incident in the history of the house.
The family was given a scrapbook with a list of former owners of their historic home, so Kenny decides to do some research about the past owners and see if he can learn more about where the ghost came from and who it is. When he arrives at the local Historical Library, Kenny is surprised to find out that someone there is expecting him. He is directed to the office of an historian named Pardon Willinghast. Willinghast tells Kenny that he keeps track of the owners of historic homes, which is how he and others at the library recognized his last name, and he expected that someone from the Huldorf family might come to ask about the house. Kenny gives him the list of past owners and asks what Willinghast can tell him about them. Willinghast looks at the list of names and says that there probably won’t be much about them in the library but that he’ll do some research and see what he can find. Kenny also gets the idea to have the local pharmacy test a sample of wood from the stained floor to find out what the stain is.
The next time Kenny sees the ghost, he tries to talk to the ghost boy and ask him who he is. The ghost has trouble talking but manages to communicate one word: “slave.” The pharmacy tells Kenny that the stain on the wood is human blood. They can tell that the stain is more than 100 years old, which is why they haven’t reported it to the police, like they’d have to with a recent blood stain. When Kenny talks to Willinghast again, he wants to know about people who lived in his house over 100 years ago who might have owned slaves, which limits the scope of his investigation to the first three families who owned the house. Willinghast is oddly vague in his reply, and when the subject of abolitionists comes up, he makes vague references to “agitators” and people who want to “rush history.” When Kenny tries to ask him about a murder that may have occurred in the house, Willinghast becomes agitated himself and tries to discourage Kenny from inquiring further. He says that if a slave was murdered, it probably wouldn’t even have been reported in a newspaper because it wouldn’t have been considered important.
However, now that Kenny understands that a young slave was murdered in his house and is still haunting it, he can’t leave the situation alone. He continues trying to communicate with the ghost boy, and the ghost gradually finds it easier to talk to him. He says that his name is Caleb and indicates that he is tied to the stain on the floor. He can’t seem to move very far from it. He says that he’s a memory of what happened there. He is aware that he was murdered, but he doesn’t know who did it because he was killed in his sleep. He senses that he was killed by someone who wanted to keep him a slave because he and other black people were trying to free themselves from slavery. Kenny asks Caleb if there’s anything he can do to help him, and Caleb asks him to find his murderer. Kenny asks how he can do that when the murder happened so long ago.
Then, the attic changes, and Kenny finds himself back in the past, in Caleb’s time. Kenny looks out the window and sees a strange man in a black cape watching the house. As he explores the town, he witnesses a public argument about slavery and someone asks him to deliver a note. The next morning, Kenny is back in his own bed, in his own time. When Kenny talks to the ghost again, he describes what he saw in the past, and Caleb recognizes these events and people as being part of the circumstances that led to his death. He has trouble believing that Kenny really cares about what happened to him so long ago. He says that white people have broken their promises to him before, but Kenny insists that he does care and that he wants to not only solve his murder but prevent it so Caleb can finally be free from haunting that room.
However, that’s going to be even more difficult than Kenny thinks. On his next trip into the past, he discovers who their true enemy is: Pardon Willinghast. Willinghast isn’t just an historian. Almost like Caleb, Willinghast is memory, a piece of the past that keeps coming back to haunt the people who live in Caleb’s old house and who have tried to help Caleb before. Willinghast has figured out that if someone from the future comes to the past and they lose something they’ve carried with them or if they get hurt or change themselves in some way, they can get stuck in the past, seeming like ghosts to the people there. (Or, so he says.) He has used this knowledge before against other people who have tried to help Caleb, blackmailing them into helping him instead. Now, he has the lucky key chain that Kenny always carries with him. Until Kenny gets this key chain back, he’s stuck in the past, and Willinghast won’t return it until Kenny does what he wants. In fact, he implies that Kenny is already doing what he wants, leaving Kenny to wonder if he’s accidentally leading Caleb into a trap while trying to help him escape from one.
Kenny set out to help Caleb, but he’s in danger of becoming a part of the same cycle of murder that has been repeated over and over for almost 200 years. As Kenny tries to help Caleb, he knows he’s being manipulated by Willinghast into playing a role in a very old story, but since he doesn’t have a copy of the script, he struggles to figure out what has to change to break the cycle. Can he find a way to break cycle and escape without either himself or Caleb losing their lives?
Th book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction and Spoilers
This is a book that I remembered from when I was a kid, but strangely, I’m sure that I never heard the end of it back then. I’m having trouble remembering exactly why I never heard the end. I think it might have been one that a teacher was reading aloud, and maybe I was absent the day she finished it. Either that, or I started reading it myself and chickened out before the end because I was spooked.
This book poses a kind of “gun-to-your-head” type of decision, forcing both Kenny and the readers to consider what they would do if they were forced to make a choice between two horrible options. In this case, Kenny is put into the position of being pressured into committing a murder or being trapped forever in the past. Willinghast committed the original murder, and he tells Kenny that the only way he’ll return his keychain to him and let him go home is if he shoots Caleb himself this time. Willinghast is confident that he can force Kenny to do what he wants because he’s done the same to others before him. Other past owners of the house have tried to help Caleb before, but Willinghast has manipulated each of them into betraying Caleb and shooting him instead. These are the betrayals that Caleb referred to earlier. Willinghast claims that each of these people has lost their memory of what they’ve done when they return to their own time, so Kenny won’t have to worry about feeling guilty about killing Caleb. But, if Kenny gives in, he knows that Caleb will remain a ghost, and someday, someone else will also be in Kenny’s position, another pawn in Willinghast’s sick game of endlessly repeated murder. As long as Willinghast gets his way, not only is Caleb going to be his perpetual murder victim, but every person who tries to help will continue to be victimized and forced to participate in his bloody crime.
There is also a deeper theme to this story. Violence begets violence, and hate begins hate. Murder, revenge, hatred, and yes, also slavery and racism, are part of violent cycles that draw other people into them long after the original deed was done. People are haunted by the past in many ways … especially those who feel like they’ve got something to prove about it. It’s a theme that’s been very much on people’s minds in the early 21st century, and there are many, like Kenny, who are unwilling to be pulled into going along with violence, murder, racism, and everything that goes with it just to save some past people’s public images or some modern people’s egos.
Willinghast has correctly realized that the reason why he’s able to come back is because he’s a part of Caleb’s memory as his original murderer. Every time Caleb’s ghost tries to solve his murder and change the past, Willinghast gets reawakened to interfere. In his role posing as the historian, he rewrites the accounts of Caleb’s death in the archives to trick the people trying to help him. He’s not about truth but manipulation, much like the pseudo-historians who resurface to tell “their truth” when certain controversial topics come up. He has a vested interest in lying to cover up his own shameful deed and to force others into helping him get things his way. Willinghast does not care either about accurate history or about the welfare of future generations; he only uses them to cover up his own misdeeds. He’s used other people to repeat his dirty work before, and he’ll do it again, blaming Caleb each time for bringing it on himself by trying to survive instead of just accepting his own murder and staying dead … unless things are different this time around. The violence ends when someone finally says no and refuses to play along. So, what Kenny is really looking for, in this situation where he seems to be given a choice between two horrible options, is a third option that allows both him and Caleb to escape.
Because the story is framed as one being told by Kenny to the author later, readers know from the beginning that Kenny finds another solution to the problem that doesn’t include murdering Caleb or being trapped in the past as a ghost. The suspense comes from the readers wondering how he’s going to do that. Kenny’s solution isn’t entirely peaceful (spoiler) because he ends up shooting Willinghast, but that could be seen as an act of self-defense, not only saving himself but also Caleb and all of Willinghast’s future victims. It seems like eliminating Willinghast was the only way to end the cycle of murder because it wasn’t really Caleb’s attempts to save himself or bring his murderer to justice but Willinghast’s attempts to cover up his crime that kept the cycle going. Willinghast blames Caleb for trying to avoid being murdered, but the truth is that it’s his original act of murder that created this situation from the beginning and his continual cover-up and recruitment of unwilling abettors that has kept the cycle going. Readers can debate whether there was another way to solve the problem, but once Willinghast is gone, the cycle is broken.
Some might also point out that the reason why Willinghast targeted Caleb in the first place was that Caleb shot one of Willinghast’s associates first, but the reason why Caleb did that was that Willinghast’s associates were violently targeting a black neighborhood, and Caleb was trying to hold them off. Once again, violence begets violence until someone decides not to participate. In the end, Kenny commits a violent act, but the cycle ends because he gets the one person who was at the center of all of the other violence from the beginning. Kenny also remembers everything that happened when he returns to his own time, which brings up a point that I’ve already mentioned but I’d like to explain in more detail: Willinghast is a liar.
The only reason why Kenny knows, or thinks he knows, that Willinghast has power over him and can prevent him from returning to his own time as long as he holds one of his belongings is because Willinghast says so. Nobody else in the story says that, and frankly, Willinghast is a known liar. He was never a real historian. He’s only another ghost from the past masquerading as one to trick people into doing his bidding. He fakes historical records to manipulate people. He is an admitted murderer. He said that Kenny wouldn’t remember what happened in the past when he returns to his own time, so he wouldn’t have to feel guilty about shooting someone, but Kenny remembers everything. This didn’t occur to me when I first encountered this story as a kid, but looking at it now, I can’t help but think, why the heck should Kenny believe anything that Willinghast says about how the time travel works?
At the point in the story where Willinghast tells Kenny that he’s trapped in the past as long as he has his key chain, Kenny already been to the past once and returned from it without either Willinghast’s help or interference. Kenny did not get to the past by Willinghast’s power, but through Caleb’s memories. Willinghast was counting on Kenny to be frightened and confused so that he would rely on his word for what’s going to happen to him in the past and feel like he had something real to lose for not going along with his plans, but even as I read the story, I doubted him. I think what he said about Kenny needing his key chain to return home might have just been another of Willinghast’s lies. I don’t recall seeing anything in the story that proved that Willinghast was right, and it seems that none of his other victim/accomplices put his lies to the test to find out. There is no one else trapped in the past as a ghost because we never see any such people in the story. So, if that hasn’t actually happened to anyone before, how would Willinghast or anyone else know that such a thing was even a possibility?
The fact that Kenny remembers shooting Willinghast also suggests that everything Willinghast said may have been a lie. He claimed that none of the other time travelers retained their memories, so Kenny wouldn’t remember if he shot Caleb. If Kenny wouldn’t remember shooting Caleb, how would he be able to remember shooting Willinghast? Unless Willinghast needs to be alive after Caleb’s death to rewrite people’s memories, it sounds like the idea that Kenny wouldn’t remember what happened in the past was a lie. We never see or hear from the other people Willinghast manipulated, so we don’t know for sure that they had no memories or guilt over what happened. That could be another subject for debate among readers, but from what I saw in the story, I’m thinking that Willinghast should be considered a liar on everything he said. I think the real trap wasn’t that Willinghast was holding Kenny in the past so much as Willinghast was making Kenny believe that he was. Although he tried to make Kenny believe that he only had two choices, Kenny himself found a third one. Perhaps there were other possible choices, but we know that there was at least one more option than Willinghast led Kenny to believe he had.
Because there are violent themes in this story, it isn’t for very young kids, but it does combine some historical details with excitement for kids who enjoy scary stories. There is also some use of the n-word on the part of the villains in the story, so be warned. The story is thought-provoking on the subjects of history and personal choices.
In the end, after Kenny has finished telling his story to the author, he says that he knows that Caleb survived the room where he was murdered before and no longer haunts it. Caleb ran away after Willinghast was dead, but Kenny doesn’t know where he went after that or what happened to him. He finds himself worrying that the violence caught up with him again somewhere else and that maybe he’s just haunting a different house now because the memory of all that was done to him will never end. This is the final question the story leaves readers. Is that how it really is? Is there an end to the wrong, or are Caleb and others like him still ghosts who haunt us all?
This story reminds me somewhat of a YouTube video made by Kaz Rowe in 2022 about the history of ghost hunting. While talking about the history of belief in ghosts and our society’s fascination with ghosts and ghost stories, Kaz Rowe points out that many of our historical American ghost stories focus on moments when our society failed and innocent or vulnerable people suffered. The ghosts that haunt our society often represent unresolved situations – unpunished crimes, unacknowledged injustices, perpetuated wrongs, and tragedies that can’t be undone. There is a feeling that there was more that our society could have done and should have done to prevent needless death and suffering, and that’s probably true. Perhaps some of these problems were the result of people who thought (or convinced others) that they only had one option or just one choice between two bad options – black-and-white thinking, if you will – so they made terrible choices, never considering or choosing to acknowledge that there might be other ways. One of the difficult parts of studying history is considering the choices not made and the things people of the past left undone. It does create an unsettling a sense of the unresolved, that the past is still with us and haunting us today. What Kaz Rowe was talking about is that part of the interest in communicating with ghosts is that sense of the unresolved. There were people in the past who needed help and didn’t get it, people whose voices weren’t heard when they needed someone to listen, and people who suffered when no one seemed to care. When people reach out to ghosts, they seem to be saying that, even if no one heard them or cared about them in their time, someone does care now and wants to hear what they have to say. We don’t have the ability to go back and change the past, like the character in the story, but there may be the hope that caring and listening can, in some way, offer peace to the ghosts of the past because someone finally understands what they went through and how they felt.
Do I think Caleb and others are still haunting us? Yes, after a fashion, I think so. There is the haunting feeling of a past that can’t be changed or entirely made right. Caleb isn’t haunting Kenny’s house anymore, but he is haunting Kenny’s mind because of the shared trauma of what they went through and Kenny’s lingering fears about Caleb’s life after the events.
In that sense, I would say that maybe the ghost hunters have it right. Maybe the best thing to do with the ghosts of the past is not to be afraid of them but to pay attention to them and see them and their situations for exactly what they were. The haunting in the back of our minds comes from our inability or unwillingness to see what we can sense is there and is begging to be seen. That feeling comes from the human impulse to investigate and understand. It’s the unknowables and uncertainties in life that are the most frightening. When you know, even when you know the worst, you stop worrying so much about it. There are no more unanswered questions and things that just don’t add up, the questioning little voices in your head fall quiet, and the ghosts have nothing more to say because they’ve been heard and seen.
The House on Hackman’s Hill by Joan Lowery Nixon, 1985.
This creepy book is interesting partly because it is told in two parts. About half the story is a flashback that explains the history of the house and the mummy inside it, and the rest continues in the present day.
The very beginning of the story is in the present, starting with a pair of cousins. While they are visiting their grandparents, Jeff tells his cousin Debbie that he’s found out about an old, abandoned house nearby that supposedly contains a hidden mummy and that there’s a reward for anybody who finds it. Debbie doesn’t believe him at first, but he says that he heard all about it from their grandparents’ neighbor, Mr. Karsten. Jeff persuades Debbie to come with him to check out the old house. Debbie comes and takes pictures of it because she’s interested in entering a photo contest.
The place looks really creepy, and they have the odd feeling like somebody is watching them, even though the house is supposed to be empty. Debbie says that they should ask their grandparents what they know about the old house. At first, the grandparents don’t want to talk about it. They just say that it’s an old house and not very interesting. Debbie asks them directly about the mummy, and they say that there are a lot of rumors about the old place, but they don’t really believe them. The kids decide to talk to old Mr. Karsten again. Mr. Karsten says that he knows all about the old house on Hackman’s Hill because he lived there for awhile when he was young, back in 1911.
Paul Karsten’s Story
Paul Karsten’s mother was a secretary, and she went to work for Dr. Hackman, the former owner of the house, after the death of her husband. Dr. Hackman was a strange man with changeable moods. He was pleasant enough to Mrs. Karsten, but he hated children and didn’t really like having her son Paul in his house. Dr. Hackman was a history professor, specializing in Egyptology. He was approaching retirement, and he wanted to devote himself to his papers and his collection of Egyptian artifacts. Mrs. Karsten’s job was to help him catalog his collection, and Dr. Hackman offered such a good salary, Mrs. Karsten couldn’t refuse. The mummy was delivered the same day that Paul and his mother moved into the house.
Paul was given a room in the tower of the house, and while he thought that it had a great view at first, he got nervous when he noticed how the tower room was situated on the edge of a cliff. One of Dr. Hackman’s servants, Jules, makes a comment about how Paul should be careful because they don’t want “another accident”, refusing to say more about whatever “accident” occurred there before. Paul was uncomfortable with the house and with Dr. Hackman. He tells his mother that the house frightens him and that he wants to leave, but his mother reassures him that the place only looks strange because of the Egyptian artifacts. Paul found the artifacts he once saw at a museum exhibit frightening and he’s particularly disturbed by a statue that Dr. Hackman has of a man with an animal head, but his mother says that’s just a statue of an Egyptian god.
Paul had notice earlier that a long box had been delivered to the house, and he gives into temptation and tries to look inside. However, he is stopped by Jules. Jules and his wife Anna warn Paul that this house isn’t very good for children and that Dr. Hackman doesn’t like people nosing around or messing with any of part his collection. At dinner, Paul admits to Dr. Hackman that he tried to look in the box and apologizes for his curiosity. Dr. Hackman accepts the apology, and before Paul goes to bed that evening, Dr. Hackman shows him the mummy case that was in the box. Paul asks him if it’s real, and Dr. Hackman says it is. Paul says that he heard that it’s illegal to take real mummies out of Egypt, but Dr. Hackman says that there are ways, if you’re willing to pay for it, and he was. Dr. Hackman says that his eventual goal is to turn his house into a museum of Egyptian artifacts so that scholars will come there to study them and read his papers, and he will be famous. He also says that he knows how to protect himself from the mummy’s curse. The talk of curses scares Paul, but Dr. Hackman says that nothing has ever happened to him personally because of any tomb curses … implying that something might have happened to someone else.
When Paul tells his mother that Dr. Hackman has a real mummy, she is worried and upset. She doesn’t like the idea of people obtaining artifacts through unethical or illegal means, although she knows that the laws are poorly enforced. Mrs. Karsten doesn’t believe in superstitious curses, but soon, strange things begin to happen. While putting away his things in his room, Paul discovers a strange, triangular piece of gold metal with some kind of design on it. When he goes up to bed, he feels like someone is there in the room, although he can’t find anyone. During the night, he wakes up, sees that one of his windows is open, and feels an odd urge to walk toward it, but fortunately, his mother comes to check on him and stops him. Paul and his mother both realize that they were woken by the sound of a cry in the night. His mother supposes that it was some kind of night bird, but Paul knows that it was probably something to do with the curse.
Paul insists that Jules and Anna tell him about the accident that took place in his room. They say that they weren’t working for Dr. Hackman when it happened, but they know that the person who fell from the tower room was a guest of Dr. Hackman’s, he was from Egypt, he died when he fell, and his body was shipped back home. At first, Paul thinks that the gold piece he found probably belonged to the Egyptian guest, but that’s not quite it.
Dr. Hackman gives Paul the job of polishing some of his statues, knowing that they bother him. It amuses Dr. Hackman as a mean joke. However, Paul’s fear of them fades while working with them because he begins to appreciate their artistry. Dr. Hackman is surprised that Paul is able to see that and not just be afraid of the statues. Paul asks him about the statue of the man with the animal head, and he explains that it’s a statue of Anubis, the god of the dead, and scares Paul again by saying that Anubis is the one responsible for the curses on tombs. He says that Anubis’s head is a jackal head and that jackals hunt at night and have a bark like a cry. This confirms to Paul that the curse was responsible for the cry he and his mother heard.
Paul eventually comes to realize that the strange gold piece attracts the mummy and the mummy’s curse, which is why Dr. Hackman knows that he’s in no danger. Dr. Hackman put it in the tower room to make sure that the mummy’s wrath would only come to whoever was in that room … and that’s why he made sure that Paul was given that room, too. To protect himself and his mother, Paul knows that he has to get rid of that gold piece.
Mr. Karsten finishes his story by explaining to Jeff and Debbie where he hid the gold piece and how Dr. Hackman disappeared, apparently a victim of the curse. Nobody ever discovered what happened to Dr. Hackman, and the mummy disappeared that same night, but a museum has offered a reward for anybody who finds the mummy. Mr. Karsten says that various people have tried to stay in the house and find the mummy, but nobody has succeeded. Everyone has been frightened off after just a single night in the house.
Jeff doesn’t believe in curses, and Debbie agrees to accompany him into the old house to find the mummy and claim the reward.
Return to the Present
The rest of the story is about Jeff and Debbie’s adventures with the house on Hackman’s Hill. Jeff says that he thinks all the spooky curse stuff was just put on by Dr. Hackman, who was a mean old man having a joke by scaring a kid with all that talk of curses. Dr. Hackman was definitely a mean old man who enjoyed scaring young Paul Karsten, but questions still remain. How much of what Paul experienced was really real, and what happened to Dr. Hackman? If the curse was just something he made up, why did he scream the night he disappeared, and where did he go?
Jeff’s idea is that all the creepy stuff happened at night, so the best time to go look for the mummy would be during the day. (That’s actually pretty sensible. Why go to a supposedly haunted house during the night if you don’t have to?) The kids make a plan and put together a collection of useful supplies and food for their mummy hunt. They decide to go while their grandmother is busy watching her favorite soap opera and their grandfather is in town, arranging some sort of surprise for them.
When they enter the house, they discover that everything is still inside. All of the furniture and Egyptian artifacts are like Mr. Karsten described them. Debbie has an instant camera that with takes pictures that develop themselves. (No brand name mentioned, but basically, a Polaroid instant camera or something very similar. Those were popular when I was a kid in the 1980s and into the early 1990s, especially for families and amateur photographers. They’re not as popular now with the popularity of smart phones and digital photography, but they’re still around. Although police photographers now use digital cameras, instant cameras have been used in accident and crime scene photography because they produce quick results, the photos last for a long time, and because they develop immediately after being taken, they can’t be digitally altered. What I’m saying is that Debbie has made a good choice for recording their adventures and any evidence that they uncover, and it pays off almost immediately.) When Debbie takes a picture of the statues that Mr. Karsten told them about, she notices something frightening right away: the Anubis statue doesn’t show up in photographs.
Jeff discounts the photographic evidence because Debbie’s hand shook, and the picture is somewhat blurred. However, the kids start hearing noises in the house. Then, Debbie notices that a bad snow storm is approaching. She wants to leave the house immediately, but Jeff realizes that they can’t because they’d never make it back to their grandparents’ house by the time the storm hit. Night approaches, and the kids are about to see just how true Mr. Karsten’s story was. The kids are trapped in the house by the snow storm, but they’re not there alone.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction and Spoilers
I thought that this was a fun, creepy story. The creepiness is tempered somewhat in the first half of this story because it’s told in the form of a flashback. We know during the first part of the story that Paul survives his ordeals and lives to old age because he’s telling the story of what happened when he was young to Jeff and Debbie as an old man. When Jeff and Debbie go into the house themselves, it’s less certain what’s going to happen.
There are points in the story after Jeff and Debbie enter the house where it seems uncertain how much of what Paul Karsten experienced was supernatural and how much might have been due to the machinations of Dr. Hackman, who seems to have been a very disturbed man by himself. They soon discover that the house has secret passages that could allow Dr. Hackman to move around the house unseen and create some strange phenomena himself to scare or harm people in the house. There was a point where I thought perhaps everything would turn out to be part of some elaborate plot by Dr. Hackman or someone else, but (spoiler) there is real supernatural phenomena happening.
Before the end of the book, Jeff and Debbie discover both where the mummy is hidden and where Dr. Hackman hid the mummy’s golden eyes, which Anubis has been searching for all this time. They also learn what really happened to Dr. Hackman all those years ago. He apparently did become the victim of the curse that he had tried to evade by inflicting it on others. When the story ends, it seems that the curse is ended permanently, although Jeff and Debbie do manage to get some things out of the experience.
I liked how, even though the story does turn out to be supernatural, the author introduced the idea that it might not be because that element of uncertainty kept the suspense going for longer and introduced some interesting possibilities for readers to consider. It also made it a little more plausible that the kids would be willing to enter the house because they could believe that the house itself was harmless without Dr. Hackman there to continue his plots.
Mystery of the Empty House by Dorothy Sterling, 1960.
Patricia Harrison’s family has recently moved from their apartment in New York to a house in Haven. Her father used to live in Haven when he was a boy. His mother still lives in town, and he still knows some of the other people who live there. Patricia, called Pat, is still unpacking her belongings when a boy from across the street, Jim Gray, calls to invite her to play ball with him and some of his friends in the field behind her house because his mother used to know his father when they were kids. Pat isn’t very used to playing with boys because she went to an all-girls school when she was in New York, but she agrees to go play ball with the boys.
When she goes to meet the boys, some of the other boys, the Paine brothers, don’t want her to play with them. When Jim said they were meeting “Pat”, they assumed that “Pat” was another boy. Jim says he doesn’t care if Pat is a girl or not because they could really use another player. Pat thinks they’re rude, and since they don’t seem to want her, she starts to leave, but Jim stops her and persuades her to stay. Even though Pat is usually good at baseball at school, she finds herself making clumsy mistakes when she plays with the boys, probably because she feels uncomfortable with them. Finally, she hits a home run, which is great, but there’s a problem. She accidentally hit the ball into the window of an old, abandoned house nearby that looks haunted.
The boys are mad because it’s the only baseball they have. Pat says they could just go get the ball, but the boys say they can’t. When she asks them if they’re scared, they say that’s not the problem; they’ve just promised that they won’t go near the old house. Pat says that, since she didn’t promise, she can just go get the ball, but Jim stops her from going into the house. He tells her that they can just buy a new ball. When Pat asks him why he doesn’t want her to go in, Jim says that it’s a secret having to do with the Paines. Pat says that she’s sick of the Paines and insists on going into the old house.
The old house is dark and spooky. When she climbs in through the window, Pat is startled when she runs into another person inside. At first, she can’t see the other person too clearly because it’s dark, but when she asks the girl who she is, the girl tells her that she’s Patricia Harrison. Pat is shocked and tells her that she can’t be Patricia Harrison because that’s her name. The girl finally laughs and admits that her real name is Barbara Thomas. Barbara lives next door to Pat’s grandmother and decided to stop by and meet her. When she saw Pat playing with the boys, she decided to go explore the old house instead.
Barbara is the one who explains the history of the house and the Paines’ attitude to Pat. The Paine family used to live in the old house. It’s the oldest house in town, dating back to the Colonial era. Nat Paine, the oldest of the Paine boys, was always proud of his family’s old home and used to brag about how George Washington and Lafayette visited the house during the Revolutionary War. It was even occupied by British soldiers at one time. Unfortunately, the father of the Paine boys was killed during the Korean War several years earlier (dating this story to the late 1950s or 1960, the year it was published). Since then, the family has fallen on hard times, and they’ve been unable to pay the taxes on the house. Now, because of the unpaid taxes, the town council is threatening to sell the old house to pay the unpaid taxes. The Paines have been forced to move out of the house and into a much smaller place, and Nat is very upset about it. Plus, he’s been going through this phase where he’s decided that he hates girls because he’s just getting into middle school, where all the boys either start developing crushes or decide that they hate girls. His younger brothers are being pests because they’re following his lead.
Barbara says that her father felt bad about what happened to the family and tried to convince other people in town to help the Paines pay the taxes on the old place. They could have helped, but they’ve made it plain that they just don’t want to. As Barbara’s father put it, “people in Haven are a bunch of rock-ribbed, rugged individualists who wouldn’t help their own grandmas.” (I have strong feelings about that, and I’ll explain them in the reaction section.) Barbara reveals right away that the secret Jim is keeping for the Paine brothers is that Nat made his brothers take a vow with him that they wouldn’t enter that house again “until it was rightfully theirs.” Barbara says that Nat’s sense of pride talking, and “You know how boys are.” She thinks Nat’s being overly dramatic, although she sympathizes with the family’s plight. When Pat suggests that maybe they shouldn’t be in the house, either, Barbara says that she comes there all the time to explore. Barbara thinks the old house is fascinating and that there might be a secret passage somewhere. She invites Pat to help her look for it sometime.
At dinner that night, Pat finds out that her parents already know about the death of the boys’ father and the trouble that the family is having over their old house. Pat’s mother says that the old house is a good example of the saltbox style of house that was popular in Colonial New England. (I remember my old high school history teacher explaining how the slope of the roof was meant to help snow slide off during the winter, but the uneven slope also allows more living space to be added onto an existing house.) However, Pat’s mother says that there probably aren’t any secret passages in the house because houses from that time were built pretty simply and didn’t even have closets or bathrooms. She doesn’t think that there’s any place in the old house to conceal a secret passage.
Now that Pat knows the issues with the Paine family, she begins to feel better about them, and they start being nicer to her. As Pat begins settling in, she becomes better friends with Barbara and is happy that she has another girl as a friend. They ride their bikes downtown together, and Barbara sleeps over at Pat’s house. As the girls are getting ready for bed, Pat looks out the window and sees a light in the old Paine house when no one is supposed to be there. Barbara says that whoever’s in the house is probably looking for the secret passage and the treasure. When Pat asks what she means by “treasure”, Barbara says that there’s a rumor that there’s treasure hidden in the house from Revolutionary times. The family used to be rich, but after the American Revolution, when the children of the family returned to the house after their parents were killed, the family fortune had vanished. People think that the ancestors of the Paines hid their fortune somewhere during the war and that it’s still waiting to be found. (I already had some misgivings about the people of Haven and their intentions in kicking the Paines out of their house, and now, suddenly, my suspicions are even worse.)
Barbara says that they can’t just let this mystery sneak steal what should rightfully belong to the Paines and ruin the only chance they have left of regaining their house. The girls sneak over to the house to spy on the intruder, and they end up frightening him away. The girls tell the boys about what they witnessed the next day, and they persuade the Paine brothers to come into the house with them in spite of their “vow” to look around and see what the intruder was searching for. As they inspect the kitchen fireplace, where the man was searching, and look at the flashlight he dropped, the man shows up again. It turns out that he’s a college student doing research on the Paine family.
Back in Revolutionary times, the family that lived in the house was the Woodruff family. (A Paine ancestor married into the Woodruff family, changing the family name, but the Woodruffs are also ancestors of the current Paines. It’s the same family.) The college student, Robert Popham, found some old papers that indicate that the head of the Woodruff family, the first Nathaniel Woodruff, was a Tory. Nat, who was named for this ancestor (full name Nathaniel Woodruff Paine IV), angrily denies it, saying that his family was known to associate with George Washington and Lafayette, hosting them at their house. Robert explains more about the papers he found, but he also says that the last letter Nathaniel Woodruff wrote to his wife before he was killed indicates that he feared for his life and left something hidden in an old post box to pass on to his young son. However, as Nat points out, the date on this final letter was shortly after Nathaniel Woodruff’s wife was murdered by unknown assailants. (She was found scalped, so people blamed her death on American Indians, but it’s also possible that she was killed by someone else who just wanted to make it look that way to cover up the real reason for her murder.) Nathaniel Woodruff didn’t know his wife was already dead, and since she never got the letter and he was also killed soon after, the box is probably still hidden somewhere. Robert thinks that what Nathaniel hid was proof that he was actually a spy for the Patriots and that he feared for his life because he suspected that the British knew he was a spy. He says that he wants to find this hidden box and the information it holds because it would make a fantastic historical research paper.
The kids are completely on board with the search for the hidden box, both because the Paines want to preserve the reputation of their ancestors and because there may be valuables hidden in the box that will help the Paines pay their taxes and keep their home. However, they only have until August 15, the date that the town council has set for selling the Paine house. They only have until the end of summer to figure it out!
To begin with, I didn’t like the people of Haven right from Barbara’s description of them as “rugged individuals who wouldn’t help their own grandmas.” It is pretty cold to turn out a war widow who is working as an underpaid nurse in the community and her children after their father was killed serving his country. I completely agreed with Barbara’s father’s assessment of the townspeople’s levels of generosity from the first. I suppose at least some of the townspeople of Haven probably thought they were actually being kind, giving Mrs. Paine several years after her husband’s death to come up with the mounting tax money, while doing nothing to help her and not actually paying her enough to manage and letting her family sink deeper into the hole until there was no way for them to escape, but in realistic terms, that’s not really kind at all.
We don’t actually hear the townspeople express their own feelings because the children don’t talk to the adults about their search and discoveries until they’re sure of what they found. When Barbara explained how her father felt about the townspeople’s unwillingness to help the Paines, I was also a little suspicious of their motives, and when Barbara mentioned that there’s been a popular rumor about hidden treasure in the Paine household for years and everyone has heard of it, I got really suspicious. Basically, I started looking for thieves among the townspeople. I immediately suspected that the “rugged individuals”, or at least some influential ones in the community, wanted to steal some historical treasure from a veteran’s widow and orphans because people who would would kick the widow and orphans out of their home might as well be out to steal their legacy, too.
If that was part of their plan, they weren’t very good at it, and they never even show up in the story. Perhaps I’m judging them a bit harshly, although in a way, I’m a little disappointed because that kind of Machiavellian plot would have made the story much more exciting. From the way the story goes, the townspeople might just not believe that there’s any treasure to be found because that rumor has been going around for so long and nothing has come of it. Still, I was suspicious of them for a good part of the book because it looked like the author was setting them up to be suspicious.
I was also annoyed by the townspeople because I found them ineffectual and uncreative in their approach to a community problem. They miss opportunities, and worse, they deny opportunities to others because they’re apparently stuck in their “rugged individual” mindset and won’t even entertain ideas that might help themselves as well as others when people like Barbara Thomas’s father suggest them. I often think that high-and-mighty rugged individualistic attitude cuts out so many genuinely fun, creative, and amazing possibilities that can make a community rich in character as well as money. It’s maddening to a person who thrives on creativity and likes to consider possibilities.
When I started getting really irritated at the townspeople, I guessed that, before the end of the story, they would do something to redeem themselves that would simultaneously leave me unsatisfied. I figured that the point where the townspeople finally come together would probably result in something that I thought they should have been working on from the beginning, and then, they’d act like it was such an amazing idea that they’d never thought of before and I’d be really irritated with them all over again because I thought of something like it very early in the story. Actually, that’s not how the story goes, and it’s still irritating to me.
So, what would I want them to do in this situation? Basically, the community wants its tax money, and the family wants to keep their house with a living wage that can support them. Fine. So, I asked myself, why not make this historic house, which is known to be the oldest house in town, into a community project which would actually contribute to the common good of the community (I don’t think “common good” is a dirty word, although I’m aware that some “rugged individualists” think so) and provide the Paine family with an additional source of income? If the town council invested in fixing up the house, which is also known to contain some very interesting Colonial antiques as well as fascinating architectural details and a unique history, the house could be turned into either a museum or a period bed-and-breakfast to encourage local tourism. (Sleep where George Washington and Lafayette slept!) Since it does have original furnishings and actual bedrooms, it probably wouldn’t take a lot to make the conversion for either of those projects.
The town and its business owners would benefit from the tourism, giving them an actual monetary return on their investment, and the Paine family could stay on with the house as its caretakers, receiving additional wages from visitors. People couldn’t say that the Paines simply received a handout because they would be doing valuable community work to support the town’s image and industry. It would satisfy Nat Paine’s family pride because he could talk to tour groups on the weekends and during the summer about his family’s great legacy to the history of his town. The whole community could even expand on the idea to further attract visitors, setting up a sort of local living history center, where people can learn Colonial crafts and recipes (something like what the Townsends demo on their YouTube channel), and schools from neighboring towns and cities could book field trips. Local business owners could support it with a themed restaurant and shops selling Colonial-era replicas and memorabilia and books about the time period. The town could hold special celebrations a few times a year to draw in more visitors, like a big Fourth of July parade or a Colonial Christmas celebration (although I known not all of the American colonies actually celebrated Christmas) or a re-creation of old harvest parties (more historically accurate) with plays by the local theater group (if they don’t have one, they could form one) or dramatic readings from Washington Irving at the local library or a themed fair with people selling local artisan crafts. They wouldn’t have to do all of this at once, but they could start with the matter of the house and build up from there. It’s an idea that has the potential for future expansion. This story is even set pre-Bicentenniel, so imagine what the town could do if they already had everything up and running by July 4th, 1776! Doesn’t anybody plan ahead? That’s creative use of resources. That’s community action. That’s job creation. Even if it’s not as big as Plimoth Plantation (now called Plimoth Patuxet to better incorporate the Native Americans) or Colonial Williamsburg (which both already existed by the time this story was written and could have provided inspiration), it’s still a money-making industry that is inherently built into the town’s very nature and won’t disappear tomorrow because some outside business decides to move or close a job-providing factory or something. Even if they didn’t get national or international attention, they would probably still be a destination for people from around their state and neighboring ones, and there’s potential for continued development. The project just need to be supported and promoted by the community.
Unfortunately, that’s not what they do. My griping aside, I guess if the solution was really that simple and the townspeople were more thoughtful and pro-active, we would lose the source of tension and the obstacle that our heroes have to overcome. The August 15th deadline is what pressures the kids to hurry up and find the treasure, so as irritating as it is to me, I have to put up with it.
The treasure hunt part is a lot of fun, and I liked the children’s logical, methodical approach to their search. When the children eventually find the hidden box, the story isn’t over. There are coded messages in the box that they have to decode to learn the full truth about Nathaniel Woodruff. Part of the story explains how they figure out how to decode the substitution code and the book code that compose parts of the message. The story they learn about Nathaniel Woodruff is better than anything the Paines had originally thought.
So, did they save the old house and do anything cool, like start a unique museum? Yes, and no. Although they don’t find any jewels, gold, or traditional sort of treasure, the letters that they find in the box are worth quite a bit. They sell them to a wealthy local business owner, and he donates them to a local university library. (So, you know, the wealthy business owner who never makes an actual appearance in this story and who wouldn’t have helped a war widow and her orphans for their sake can buy their family legacy and present it as his magnanimous gift to the university. I can’t say that he’s terrible for doing this because it does help, but I still think my idea was better.) The Paine family has enough money to keep their house and fix it up. It’s a pretty good ending, but I still prefer my vision. The story points out that it’s not a matter of everyone living happily ever after because they’re all their imperfect selves and still have some problems, but one lesson that they all learned from this experience is how to create their own book code to use for passing notes in class. It’s not profound, but codes are fun.
Susannah and the Blue House Mystery by Patricia Elmore, 1980.
Susannah Higgins and her friend, Lucy, live in Northern California. Susannah loves mysteries and she’s asked Lucy to be her partner as a detective. Susannah loves mysteries and is always looking for a mystery to solve, but so far, the girls haven’t found anything worth investigating. Susannah finally finds the mystery she’s been looking for when another friend’s grandfather fails to meet her at the bus stop. Shy Juliet Travis, who is largely shy because people at school have made fun of the burn scar on her face, meets her grandfather at the bus stop every day, and then, they walk home together. When he fails to show up one day, Juliet is sure that something is wrong. Susannah and Lucy, finding Juliet upset, try to reassure her, saying it’s probably nothing and that her grandfather probably forgot the time or his clock stopped. They offer to walk Juliet home to see if her grandfather is there.
Juliet and her mother live in a small apartment house next door to the old, once-grand Blue House. Her “grandfather” is the last of the old Withers family. (Juliet and her mother aren’t actually related to Juliet’s “grandfather” at all. He’s just a family friend who likes to treat Juliet and her mother like family because none of them really have any close relatives. Mrs. Travis got divorced when Juliet was a baby, and Juliet hasn’t seen her father since. Mr. Withers’s only relative is a niece named Ivy.) The Withers family was once one of the richest families in the area, but they haven’t been really wealthy for some time. Ivy Withers has some money and is a social climber, but the Blue House mansion where Mr. Withers lives has fallen into severe disrepair. Ivy pays Mrs. Travis to be her uncle’s cleaning woman, and that’s about all of the attention either the house or Mr. Withers receives.
Juliet’s mother, Mrs. Travis, cleans houses and is also an artist. When she first meets Susannah and Lucy, she comments that she’d like to do a sketch of Susannah because her face would be good for an African princess. (Susannah is African American, and this is the first mention of it in the book.) Juliet asks her mother about her grandfather, and her mother says that she thinks he went to see his friend Joe. Juliet feels a little better, thinking that her grandfather just lost track of time with his friend, but by the next morning, Mr. Withers still hasn’t come home. Susannah and Lucy go to visit Juliet again, but she and her mother don’t know much about Mr. Withers’s friend, Joe. They don’t know his full name or where he lives to see if he’s really seen Mr. Withers. Susannah says that they should take another look around the Blue House, even though Mrs. Travis has already looked there.
In the Blue House, they discover that Mr. Withers took his good coat instead of his old one and left his wallet with his identification behind. Mrs. Travis also remembers that he was carrying an umbrella, even though it wasn’t supposed to rain that day. From this information, Susannah deduces that he went to another city, where there was a chance of rain, but it couldn’t have been too far away because he didn’t take luggage or his wallet with him, and he was planning to be back to meet Juliet that afternoon. Also, since Mr. Withers doesn’t have a lot of money, he probably went by bus. After making a call to bus station to check the bus schedule for buses leaving around the time he left, they decide that the most likely place he would have gone was Sacramento. Then, the customer service agent tells them that the bus returning from Sacramento arrived late because an old man had a heart attack. Realizing that the old man could have been Mr. Withers, who couldn’t be identified because he left his wallet at home, they begin phoning hospitals to learn where he could have gone. Sadly, they learn that Mr. Withers was the man who had the heart attack and that he died in the hospital.
That would be the end of the mystery of the disappearing grandfather, but it turns out to be the beginning of a greater mystery. Susannah is disappointed that the mystery seems to be over just when she wanted to investigate some odd points of the situation more deeply. Lucy thinks that sounds heartless to be thinking of Mr. Withers’s disappearance and death as just an exciting adventure like that, but Susannah explains that there are still some aspects of the situation that seem strange. They still don’t know why he went to Sacramento. Apparently, it was something important because he felt the need to dress up in his nicer coat. (It couldn’t be to see a doctor because his Medicare card was one of the cards he left behind in his wallet.) They also don’t know who “Joe” is because this friend didn’t turn up at the funeral. Nobody else seems to know who “Joe” is, either.
Susannah also begins to suspect that Mr. Withers may have made a second will, leaving something to Juliet. Mr. Withers didn’t have much to leave, and it’s publicly known that he promised his house to Ivy because she helped him pay the taxes on it for years. Mr. Withers lost most of his money years ago due to a bad investment, and thieves also stole many of the valuable antiques that he used to own. However, on the morning of the day he died, he told Juliet that he was going to leave her a “treasure.” Juliet says that this “treasure” was supposed to be a book of some kind, and he emphasized to her that she should “see a good man.” What is that supposed to mean, and did Mr. Withers really have a treasure to leave to Juliet? Someone else must think that Mr. Withers had something of value because someone has been sneaking around the Blue House at night.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
I read this book years ago, when I was in elementary school, but for a long time, I’d forgotten the name of it and much of the plot, which made it difficult to find it again. As with so many other things, I found it again by accident while looking for something else on Internet Archive.
The part that stuck with me the most from when I read it as a kid was the scene where Susannah and Lucy meet Juliet’s mother, who is an artist. Mrs. Travis likes to do sketches of people she’s just met so she can use their faces in paintings later. When she first sees Susannah, she takes her by the chin and studies her face. She compliments Susannah’s bone structure and says that her face would be great for an African princess, which is a rather odd thing to do and say to somebody on first acquaintance. I liked the quirkiness of Mrs. Travis, and I kind of wished somebody would tell me that I looked like a princess. (I don’t, and I never really did. I look more like somebody’s teacher or librarian. I’m not either of those, but I just look like somebody who would be.)
The scene with Mrs. Travis is also the first mention in the book that Susannah is black. She is shown as black on the covers of the books in this series, but Mrs. Travis’s description of her as having the look of an “African princess” is the first indication of it in the text. The reason why I like that is that, before we get to that point, Susannah is described by her friend Lucy as an aspiring detective, an “amateur herpetologist” who dreams of buying the snake called Beelzebub in the pet store, and one of the few people who can draw out shy Juliet and get her to talk before we are given any indication of her race or appearance. I like it that readers are drawn into Susannah’s own quirky and distinctive personality before she is described physically, so she isn’t typed by race or appearance.
Further on in the book, Lucy describes more of Susannah’s appearance, saying that she has glasses and wears her hair in two clumps on her neck. They didn’t always get along because they’re in the same academic group at school, and of the two, Susannah is really the better student. She got on Lucy’s nerves by constantly nagging her to do her homework and improve her grades so their group could get the school’s Top Scholar Award. Susannah complained that Lucy actually could do better at school if she just tried and called her a “clown” and a “dumb blonde” (the first indication of what Lucy looks like) for not even trying to do better. Lucy retaliated against this criticism by drawing unflattering cartoons of Susannah. They started to resolve their differences when they got into an argument over something Lucy said to another classmate about Susannah. Lucy said that Susannah “prevaricates”, which means to lie, but what she really meant was “pontificates.” At first, Susannah was mad at Lucy for calling her a liar, then she laughed when she realized that Lucy mixed up words that were vocabulary words for their class, and then, she realized that there was some justification to Lucy’s criticism of her, that she does sometimes act like a know-it-all. Realizing that someone else had a justifiable criticism of her caused Susannah to soften her own criticism of Lucy, and their relationship improved.
I liked the description of how Lucy and Susannah came to be friends, and it also fits in with how the girls become better friends with Juliet. Appearances are important to Juliet because the burn scar on her face has made it difficult for her to make friends with people. They never explain how she got the scar, but she is very self-conscious of it because of the teasing she got about it early in life. She is very shy and has a habit of turning her head to the side as she talks to people because she doesn’t want them to look at the scar. Lucy thinks to herself that the scar isn’t really so bad. As she spends more time with Juliet, she realizes that she hardly notices it anymore, just like most of the time, she hardly notices anymore that Susannah wears glasses. It’s common for people to have various types of imperfections, and Lucy herself has crooked front teeth. The only reason why Juliet’s scar really matters is that it matters to her because it makes her feel bad about herself. What Juliet wants most of all is an operation to remove the scar tissue so the scar will be less noticeable, but her mother can’t afford it. By the end of the book, she can afford the operation, and she goes ahead with it, although part of me wanted to see her rethink it because she sees that she can make friends anyway, whether she has a scar or not.
Deceptive appearances are a large part of the mystery because things in the Blue House, Mr. Withers’s treasure, and even Mr. Withers himself weren’t quite what they seemed to be. Mr. Withers was unfortunate for losing his money and most of the beautiful antiques that he loved, but he didn’t lose everything. Ivy thinks that he was a lonely, bitter hermit who rejected all of his old friends because he was too proud to see them after he lost his money, but Lucy realizes that the truth is that Mr. Withers just made new friends who wouldn’t judge him because he was now poor. Mr. Withers wasn’t lonely, and he was even happy with the new people in his life and the secret he was keeping. Even the mysterious “Joe” and the “good man” were not what everyone assumed they were at first. As I read through the book, I remembered what Mr. Withers’s trick was, but it took me some time be sure of the villain. I thought I knew who it would turn out to be, but the author does a good job of making multiple people look guilty.
One other thing I’d like to add is that apparently none of the children in this book live in a two-parent household. Books featuring children of divorced families were becoming increasingly common in the 1980s and into the following decades, and there are three children in this book who live in single-parent households. Juliet’s mother is divorced. Lucy lives with just her father, and to her horror, she eventually discovers that he’s starting to date the divorced mother of the most annoying boy in her class (who actually proves to be very helpful in their investigation). Susannah also appears to live with her grandparents. This book doesn’t explain why, but she always talks about her grandparents and not her parents.
