These clever and humorous stories of the adventures of a brainy, problem-solving small-town boy make great reading for grade-schoolers (especially boys) or a terrific read-aloud. This is suitable for rolling-on-the-floor type laughing (not terribly well-suited to bedtime!). A real classic! The sequel, Centerberg Tales is just as good. Older children may also appreciate allusions to liberal naming of townspeople after characters from the Iliad.

Young David has grown up in an isolated cabin with his father (since his mother's death when he was only four) in a beautiful mountain setting. There, his father has given him an excellent but unusual education - he is fluent in several languages, knows a great deal about science and nature and plays the violin beautifully. His father has sheltered him from all evil and taught him only what is good and beautiful.

One day he and his father pack their belongings and head back toward civilization. The father, deathly ill, dies on the journey and David finds himself in the care of a well-meaning elderly farm couple. They and most of their neighbors have a very difficult time understanding the golden-hearted David, who makes friends with the lonely and forgotten of the town and soothes many hardened hearts with his beautiful music. David becomes wrapped up in a fairy tale and a mystery which figure heavily in the plot.

Parents may see this story as an embodiment of some of the most fundamental ideas of the homeschool movement. Some will no doubt find it a little sappy. It might make an interesting contrast to the book North to Freedom by Anne Holm, whose character, also called David and of approximately the same age, makes a transition from the evils of a prison camp into a much more beautiful world.

Marly and Joe (ages 10 and 12) are two siblings who have always lived in the city. They and their mother had endured the apparent loss of their father during wartime (unclear which war - perhaps Korean) only to discover that he had been a prisoner of war. The family is finally reunited, but their father has changed; he is bitter, touchy, angry, always tired.

Their mother had always spoken of Maple Hill and her grandmother's house that she and her brother had visited each summer as children. Her grandmother had been dead for 20 years, but Marly and Joe loved to hear stories of simple life in the country.

Their mother has a plan. Her grandmother's house has been unoccupied for years, but if they went there for a long visit, perhaps that would help her husband's troubles. And so, they pack their bags and head to rural Pennsylvania just in time for the sugar season...

This is a delightful story that embodies the human need for spending time with God's creation and the virtues of simple living. The writing is interesting and engaging, but not too hurried, with many details about how things are done on a farm (especially the sugar season), plant and animal life, etc.

ISBN # 1-59286-802-9

After the death of her mother, a young woman, Robin, must travel from her home in California to a small town in Wisconsin to live with an uncle she never knew existed. She is angry and determined to escape as soon as she turns eighteen, which will be very soon. Almost immediately upon her arrival mysterious things begin to happen. She moves into the room her mother lived in as a young woman and learns a lot about her mother by going through her things. Evidently her mother kept many other secrets, besides having a brother, from her.

Two men enter her life and she is attracted to one and repulsed by the other, yet they both seem to have an interest in her that goes beyond dating. As the story unfolds, Robin finds out that in the past her mother was involved in a life-threatening accident involving a story she was researching for the school paper. She had found a map to a treasure that was part of the history of the town. This incident is what caused her to leave town before Robin was born and to never tell Robin about her family there. The two men know the story of her mother and the treasure, and, the reader finds out, each other very well.

Robin begins to research her mother's accident and the story she was working on. However, the more she discovers about the past, the more danger she herself is in. Still, she can't seem to let it go until she learns the truth.

To tell anymore would give the mystery away. The story follows the formula of the old Victoria Holt romance mysteries where the heroine is attracted to the guy who seems good but turns out to be the bad guy. The true love is one she mistrusts or doesn't understand. The author even uses the Victoria Holt novels as props in part of the plot. It seemed obvious to me as I read it, perhaps because I read all those Victoria Holt novels when I was younger, so I asked a high school girl in my parish to read Past Suspicion and here are her exact words, "It was great! It was kind of slow at the beginning, but it was well worth it!" Although I thought the formula was obvious, there were a few twists that I did not figure out, and that's what you really want in a mystery story.

This is definitely a romance and not heavy reading, but completely morally acceptable. Even though the young woman seems rebellious, she seeks counsel from a priest and works to improve her relationship with her uncle. The romance part of the story is pretty much kept on an intellectual level.

Most impressively, Miss Heckencamp, wrote the draft of this story when she was eighteen. She captures the torn emotions of the main character and the rising sense of danger very adeptly. A high school girl who likes romances would enjoy this story very much.