Kady Ryder turns 16 in nine days and all she wants is to grow up, leave behind heartbreak, and feel normal. But this scorching hot morning in the Northern California Delta she reads the front-page story “Death Row Killer Claims Knowledge of Missing Girl,” and all hope of normal vanishes.
Kady and her family relive the nightmare that began one year ago when Felicity Tinker, Kady’s cousin and best friend, disappeared.
To find the truth about Felicity’s disappearance—and to face condemned killer Daryl Lee Purse—Kady knows she needs help that her broken-hearted family cannot offer. Reluctantly she turns to Daniel Quist, the detective who promised to find Felicity but who let everyone down.
Although Quist believes he compromised Felicity’s case, he agrees to help. But can Quist, a man haunted by his unrequited love for his estranged ex-wife, his precarious relationship with his 17-year-old daughter, and his alcoholic past, be counted on?
As Kady pursues the truth without any guarantee she’ll find it, she fears her family may be breaking apart irrevocably, as her little sister Olive wakes from nightmares of bad men. All while Kady finds herself drawn to the mysterious boy Jordan Carlsen, who was Felicity’s last crush. And in the background, the Ragman, a local homeless man she’s never feared, but are her instincts trustworthy?
The Book of Riddles is a coming-of-age mystery about the bittersweet lessons of first love, surviving searing loss, facing truths wherever they take you, and, ultimately, about gaining the wisdom to open your heart without giving yourself away.
One year ago…
On a moonlit June night in the California Delta when the window screens still hold the sun’s sting, Kady hears her cousin Felicity’s hoot-owl call, a low humming ‘whooo-ee,’ drifting across the shared grape-stake fence between their gardens.
Tiptoeing into the shadows dancing among artful hedges and sweet clusters of wisteria, Kady whispers, “But you’re grounded!”
Felicity grins, and moonlight shimmers off her hair, soft and shiny as corn-silk.
“Riddles can be playful or profound, poetic and probing, or enchanting with trickery and misdirection. Every play of words that relishes sense and sound appeals to our innermost feelings.” A Brief History of Riddles (The Society of Classical Poets) by Manfred Dietrich
This night the concrete sidewalks press the heat into the bare feet of runaway girls, so they race across acres of connecting lawns, Kady trailing her cousin until they reach Rose Park where the petals of French, Cabbage, China and Just Joey roses bless the earth.
They sprawl like snow angels on the warm grass, staring up at the sky where the Milky Way gradually appears—and then bursting across darkness, one at a time, the shooting stars.
“Like fireflies,” Felicity whispers, “the ones we saw in Ohio last summer.”
And Kady remembers that the fireflies almost swallowed the world with their glow, and she couldn’t bear capturing them behind glass the way the other kids did.
And it was Felicity who ran through those fireflies so they tangled in her long, golden hair.
And this night as they watch meteors shooting across oceans of sky, Felicity laughs, her laughter so filled with joy and mystery and contagion that Kady joins in. Hands stretched overhead, fingers entwined, their shivering bodies imprinting grass, the moment becomes etched forever in the firefly synapses of memory…
Less than a week later, the girl with golden hair rides her bike into the failing dusk along the American River. She rides on the less-traveled sandy trail avoiding the last of the sunburned swimmers waving away clouds of evening gnats and tiny darting bats, and the families heading back to their cars, their homes.
She peddles wildly, face flushed with heat—as her tires hit ruts and roots, gaining air in jolts. Her pink backpack rises, too, and in it her diary overflowing with her hopes and dreams; her Book of Riddles almost filled to the last page because her birthday is mere days away; backpack slapping ribs and the smacking sound almost a song. While across the river startled quails flush, disappearing into the shadows—and a lone egret calls to its mate….