GHOSTS OF WINTER

In Gorder’s middle-grade novel (one in a series), spiteful 19th-century ghosts pursue a group of friends who find a vintage pocket watch.

A seventh grade class in California excitedly embarks on a field trip to the Elk Grove Museum. One student, Houdi, isn’t so happy to see an apparition of the same hollow-eyed, violin-playing ghost lady that plagued his nightmare. But “glints of light” also lead him to discover a gold pocket watch. That watch has quite the history—it was already an heirloom back in 1851, when thieving brothers Cy and George Skinner swiped it. Though it changed hands several times, Cy and George’s equally criminal mother Lucy declared it solely hers. In the present day, the Skinners’ ghosts haunt the museum, on account of the nearby graveyard hiding under an overgrowth of grass and weeds. Houdi’s older sister Amelia suggests a daring adventure: They’ll search for that graveyard. That’s more than enough motivation for Lucy and her boys to chase the siblings and their friends, as one of them surely has Lucy’s pocket watch. Gorder’s concise tale is rife with real-world history, with almost half of the novel centering around Elk Grove in the midst of the Gold Rush. The Skinners’ story is full of tension—they steal, keep their heads down (wanted posters are all over), and wind up in gunfights. The less thrilling present-day setting is a touch convoluted as numerous characters pop in with nary an introduction (though many are returning from the Gold Rush Ghosts series’ first installment). Houdi, however, is a memorable young hero who regales others with magic tricks and may have a sixth sense for danger. An appendix provides absorbing details on the real-life people and things that inform the narrative, including the Five Joaquins gang and the Stinking Tent Saloon. Peterson’s bold-lined, charcoallike sketches deliver such haunting images as one of the ghostly Skinners and a shadowy, flashlight-illuminated corridor.

This entertaining yarn smoothly blends historical fiction with a spookfest.