The Silver Box

"Margi Preus shows her deep knowledge of and appreciation for Minnesota while telling an engaging story with puzzles and action and heart. The Silver Box is truly a celebration of our state—from its North Woods to its Twin Cities landmarks."—Kurtis Scaletta, author of Lukezilla Beats the Game

In the final Enchantment Lake mystery, Francie’s search for the truth about her mother—and herself—plunges her into danger during a North Woods winter

When she wakes in her aunts’ cold cabin on the shore of Enchantment Lake, Francie remembers: everything about her life has changed. Or is about to. Or just might. Everything depends on the small, engraved silver box that she now possesses—if only she can follow its cryptic clues to the whereabouts of her missing mother and understand, finally, just maybe, the truth about who she really is. 

Francie, it turns out, has a lot to learn, and this time the lessons could be deadly. Her search for answers takes her and her best friends Raven and Jay as far afield as an abandoned ranch in Arizona and as close to home as a sketchy plant collector’s conservatory and a musty old museum where shadows lurk around every display case. At the heart of it all is a crime that touches her own adopted North Woods: thieves dig up fragile lady’s slippers, peel bark from birches, strip moss off trees, cut down entire forests of saplings to sell for home décor. But Francie is up against no ordinary plant theft. One ominous clue after another reveal that she possesses something so rare and so valuable that some people are willing to do anything to get it. When Francie’s investigation leads her into the treacherously cold and snowy North Woods, she finds out  that she too is being pursued.

Margi Preus is a New York Times bestselling author of books for young readers, including the Newbery Honor–winning Heart of a Samurai. Among her other novels are Village of Scoundrels, Shadow on the Mountain, West of the Moon, and The Bamboo Sword, as well as the previous two books in the Enchantment Lake series, Enchantment Lake and The Clue in the Trees, which were published by the University of Minnesota Press and received the Midwest Book Award and the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award. She lives in Duluth.

Contents

1. The Wolf

2. The Puzzle Box

3. Snowshoeing

4. The Cabin

5. Strange Lodgings

6. The Apartment

7. At School

8. At the Museum

9. Granddad Interferes

10. School, Then Birch Grove

11. Hiding the Box

12. The Minneapolis Institute of Art

13. Como Park Conservatory

14. A Bit of Down

15. Trouble

16. The Stake-Out

17. More Trouble

18. A Suspicious Death

19. Arizona

20. The Ranch House

21. An Acting Gig

22. Birch Grove

23. The Red Fishhouse

24. Killing of Time

25. A Little Interlude

26. Community Service

27. Loretta’s Cabin

28. Out on the Lake

29. Christmas Evening

Author’s Note