When she wakes in her aunts' cold cabin on the shore of Enchantment Lake, Francie remembers: everything about her life has changed. Or is about to. Or just might. Everything depends on the small, engraved silver box that she now possesses-if only she can follow its cryptic clues to the whereabouts of her missing mother and understand, finally, just maybe, the truth about whom she really is.
Francie, it turns out, has a lot to learn, and this time the lessons could be deadly. Her search for answers takes her and her best friends Raven and Jay as far afield as an abandoned ranch in Arizona and as close to home as a sketchy plant collector's conservatory and a musty old museum where shadows lurk around every display case. At the heart of it all is a crime that touches her own adopted North Woods: thieves dig up fragile lady's slippers, peel bark from birches, strip moss off trees, cut down entire forests of saplings to sell for home décor. But Francie is up against no ordinary plant theft. One ominous clue after another reveal that she possesses something so rare and so valuable that some people are willing to do anything to get it. When Francie's investigation leads her into the treacherously cold and snowy North Woods, she finds out that she too is being pursued.
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Even before she lifted her head from the pillow, Francie remembered everything about her life had changed. 1, THE WOLF
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(@UMinnPress, 6 October 2020, 200 pages, ebook, #ARC from the publisher and voluntarily reviewed)
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This is a great end to what was a really enjoyable YA adventure / mystery series. I enjoyed all of the books but this is my favourite. You really need to have read all three books to get the full picture as some events won't be seen as significant unless you know the back-story. This brings together all the threads from the previous two books and Francie finally solves the mystery of what's in the silver book, why people want it so much they're willing to kill for it and what really happened to her mother. There's the usual with Francie being suspicious of everyone, lying to authorities, spying and sneaking around and rubbing the wrong sort of people up the wrong way. This is a fun, entertaining read. I would mind reading more Francie adventures.
