• Age: 9 to 12
• Grade: 4 to 7
• Reading age: 9 to 12

A thirteen-year-old boy finds a pocket watch linked to a local legend about a lost treasure.

Theo is happy spending his summer searching the river for treasure. Even if he mostly just finds empty cans and fishing lures. But when he discovers a pocket watch in the waters beneath a bridge that's said to be haunted, he is sure his luck has changed. Theo soon learns that the pocket watch is linked to a local legend about a ghost and buried treasure. Theo is determined to solve this mystery and posts his progress online. Even after he receives an anonymous threat telling him to leave things alone, Theo continues to dig deeper. He learns that the death of a traveler decades earlier may not have been an accident. And that there’s someone out there who will stop at nothing to keep the truth buried.

Allison Finley has a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. She works as a freelance writer and editor. Allison gratefully lives next to a river just outside of Vancouver, British Columbia, on the ancestral, traditional and unceded territory of the Kwikwetlem First Nation.

Allison Finley's profile page

“An irresistible narrative voice...An engaging mystery told simply but eloquently.”

Kirkus Reviews