One of my most cherished memories from my childhood is reading The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin with my mother. We kept a little notebook, sized for little hands, where I would write down all of the clues from Mr. Westing’s will and everything else that was revealed along the way. I still remember the way I felt when I put the clues together into a a very big clue that led me to the big reveal – before Turtle herself had figured it out! I loved the wordplay and the puzzles and the fact that Raskin made solving this one achievable for a kid like me.
The Westing Game likely wasn’t the first mystery I read, but it certainly spurred my lifelong love for them. I still get a thrill every time I figure out a mystery on my own, whether it’s in a book, a game, or a play. Of course, nothing quite matched the magic of that first experience with The Westing Game.
Enter Varian Johnson and The Parker Inheritance. I was lucky enough to see Johnson, a local Austin author, speak at an event recently, which convinced me to finally pick up my copy of The Parker Inheritance and give it a read. I was so delighted the whole way through. The Parker Inheritance is a mystery predominantly based on puzzles and riddles contained within a letter from an eccentric individual who has recently died, much like Raskin’s Newbery winner from 1978. Reading it brought back the joy I experienced when reading The Westing Game, but this is no imitation. Johnson has created a unique mystery that feels fresh and modern, one that kids will love trying to solve alongside his protagonists.
Candice Miller and her mom – recently separated from her dad – are staying in Candice’s grandmother’s old home in Lambert, South Carolina while their home is renovated. Candice’s grandmother died a short while ago, but she was infamous in Lambert for digging up historic tennis courts to try and find treasure underneath (none was found). She lost her job as assistant city manager because of it.
When Candice is exploring the attic, though, she finds a letter addressed to her grandmother, a letter that explains why she would have done such a seemingly inexplicable thing as dig up a treasured community space in the middle of the night without any permission or authorization. The letter tells of an old injustice done upon the family of a young woman named Siobhan Washington, and how the letter writer planned to visit justice upon the culprits. The letter writer has hidden a great treasure somewhere within Lambert for the person who can find it, and everything needed to figure out the mystery is contained within the letter itself. Candice’s grandmother tried and failed; Candice is determined to finish the job.
After a rocky start, she teams up with Brandon Jones, the boy across the street, and the two set about solving the mystery involving a Black family (the Washingtons) who lived in the segregated town of Lambert in the 1950s. Johnson’s novel tackles the racism Siobhan and her family experienced then as well as the racism Candice and Brandon (who are also Black) experience even now, pitching everything perfectly to a middle grade audience. The Washingtons’ story is heartbreaking, full of twists and turns and surprises that are revealed slowly as the kids figure out the series of clues. Johnson peppers the book with flashbacks, first to the patriarch of the Washingtons when he was a child of sharecroppers in the early 1900s, then to the events of the 1950s, where the bulk of the story takes place, and finally to the decades afterward, where readers learn about the rippling effects of everything that happened.
The Parker Inheritance is such a fun book that doesn’t sacrifice depth. Candice and Brandon are well-realized characters that readers will root for, and their sadness and horror and anger at discovering what happened to Siobhan and her family will mirror young readers’. Readers will be able to follow the clues as Candice and Brandon discover them; some may even figure out some vital information before they do! Johnson’s story has a lot to say not only about the ingenuity of kids, but also about racism, human nature, forgiveness, and revenge. The later chapters focusing on the decades after the tragedy of the 1950s were my favorite: bittersweet and lovely and ultimately hopeful. This is a book that can be read on multiple levels; the luckiest readers will understand it on all.
Personal copy
