At first, this book, about a family that’s grown bitter and distant and how they begin to reconcile, seemed slow and flat. But things pick up as soon as 13-year-old Ellsworth is back in the town of Smiths Mills, where he and his distant cousin Jess set about hunting for the treasure that gives the book its title. It’s a pleasing and touching story, full of family histories and mysteries and wonder. I especially liked Ellsworth’s great-aunt Elizabeth, a Quaker who has little hand-lettered signs taped around her house, signs with sayings like “WAY WILL OPEN,” which Elizabeth explains to Ellsworth like this:<\/p>\n
\nI always envisioned that as. . . fumbling, in the dark, against a high wall covered with, oh, I don’t know, thorns and prickles and maybe ugly bugs that bite. No way through except, suddenly, because you’ve kept fumbling, kept trusting, your hand touches a knob, and you turn it, and then, well, then, a door opens, doesn’t it? Into light, of course. Light, and lots of other good things, most of which you didn’t expect.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
(page 75)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At first, this book, about a family that’s grown bitter and distant and how they begin to reconcile, seemed slow and flat. But things pick up as soon as 13-year-old Ellsworth is back in the town of Smiths Mills, where he and his distant cousin Jess set about hunting for the treasure that gives the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-young-adultchildrens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}