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Overview
Twelve-year-old Andy Bonner isn't thrilled with his teacher's assignment to explore family history. When he starts asking questions about his ancestors, he is startled to discover a black sheep in the family tree. No one wants to reveal what happened in his family's past. But Andy is determined to break the silence. Casting his net widely, from the Internet to the local cemetery, Andy's search helps everyone realize it's never too late to seek justice.
While working on a genealogy project for his seventh grade history class, Andy Bonner becomes determined to solve the mystery surrounding a distant relative who was accused of stealing the family fortune.
Synopsis
Twelve-year-old Andy Bonner isn't thrilled with his teacher's assignment to explore family history. When he starts asking questions about his ancestors, he is startled to discover a black sheep in the family tree. No one wants to reveal what happened in his family's past. But Andy is determined to break the silence. Casting his net widely, from the Internet to the local cemetery, Andy's search helps everyone realize it's never too late to seek justice.
Publishers Weekly
An assignment to research his family history leads a boy to discover an intriguing secretbut to solve the mystery he may risk hurting those he loves. Ages 8-12. (May)
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
An assignment to research his family history leads a boy to discover an intriguing secretbut to solve the mystery he may risk hurting those he loves. Ages 8-12. (May)Children's Literature -
Nixon has turned a tedious school assignment into an exciting quest. As 12-year old Andy interviews various family members in order to record his family's oral history, he learns more about them and the settlement of Texas in the 1800's. Moreover, his investigation is met with stonewalling, threats, admonishments, difficult decisions and plenty of adventure. Outlaws, graveyard walking, the Internet, and a pair of elderly aunts are woven into this tension-packed story of one boy's determination to complete a school assignment while proving that his relative Coley Joe is innocent, and rewriting history in the process.School Library Journal
Gr 5-8-A thrilling search through a family's dark past. What starts out as a simple family-history project turns into an obsessive hunt for the truth behind an old family feud. Andy Bonner is determined to get to the bottom of a mystery involving an ancestor who had supposedly stolen his parents' money and been disowned. The more he learns from his Great Aunt Winnie and her nemesis, his best friend's great-grandmother, the more he needs to know. His investigation takes him from the World Wide Web to the town cemetery, to family sources who refuse to talk. As usual, Nixon's main character is an ordinary kid with extraordinary resourcefulness. When Andy learns the truth, he must decide whether to keep the secret to himself, or destroy the reputation of the town's founding father and hurt his best friend. Nixon has once again delivered a riveting tale of suspense set against a background of fascinating historical context, brought up to date through e-mail and the Internet.-Julie Halverstadt, Douglas Public Library District, Castle Rock, COKirkus Reviews
The sleepy Texas town of Hermosa where Andy, 12, lives has harbored a shameful secret for more than a century; when Andy starts to research his family history for a school assignment, he becomes intrigued by the status of one of his ancestors, who has been scratched out of the family Bible and of whom no one—not even Great- Aunt Winnie—will speak. Apparently Cole Joseph Bonner committed a deed so dastardly that he was disowned. Andy tackles the secret with the help of his best friend, J.J., the town librarian, Mrs. Alonzo, and genealogy experts he contacts on the Internet. Once he solves the mystery of Coley Joe, who is said to have stolen the family fortune, but who was really shot in the back and robbed by the founding member of one of Hermosa's fine old families, Andy realizes that to reveal what he knows will harm other people.Hooey. Readers will never buy that all these years later; Andy, by fudging his findings publicly, commits the same sin of covering up that the murderer did. From veteran Nixon (Spirit Seeker, 1995, etc.), this is a bland, homespun mystery without enough suspense to lace a shoe, let alone a history project. The feuding of two old women (almost as interchangeable in personality as in their names—Miz Minna and Miss Winnie) never gains credibility, and the linking of the old (genealogy) with the new (the Internet) feels like a gimmick.