Ghost hunters, Tom Sawyer, and Three Investigators!
This week it's all about exorcising ghosts!
The Phantom Files: Twain’s Treasure is a book I’ve wanted to read for some time. The time finally came this past week, and the experience was a pure delight.
My connection with the author of the Phantom Files series, William B. Wolfe, goes back to the late 90s when we both worked at the Courier-Journal in Louisville, KY. While Bill was a business writer and editor, I was an advertisement artist and designer. For about a decade, we combined our skills to create a weekly children's page for Newspaper In Education entitled 4YourInfo. You can read a bit about that here. Through the years, Bill has been a constant source of encouragement (and was the first to volunteer to read my manuscript for The Mystery of A Nubbins and offer helpful notes!), so when I learned he'd written a middle-grade book, I had to read it.
It's a bit nerve-wracking reading books written by friends and family because, in the back of your mind, you are thinking, "What if I don't like it?" In this case, I had nothing to fear. Bill's writing not only met but exceeded my already high expectations. The pace is brisk, the humor sharp, and the characters well drawn.
A common trope in supernatural stories is to have a believer team up with a skeptic, à la the X-Files. Bill twists this trope by having the believer, Bones McFadden, team up with a classmate, Alex April, who sees dead people but pretends to be a nonbeliever so everyone, including the ghosts, will leave him alone. Not even Bones knows Alex’s secret! His lies go deep. As we learn through flashbacks, Alex has adopted this posture for good reason. Unfortunately for Alex, he encounters one ghost who refuses to let him be, and that ghost is none other than the famed Mark Twain! Twain is haunting Alex because he needs help finding his lost treasure. Whatever that is. No one knows. Not even Twain himself. Bill intertwines Alex and Twain's lives with ingenious storytelling and in the process paints a rich, compelling world for us to enjoy.
Whether he's writing about EMF detectors or Samuel Langhorne Clemens, it all feels authentic. In fact, the book is so well-researched, I wish it had an appendix or two detailing references to Twain’s work in the story, and containing photos of the places mentioned in Hannibal, Missouri like the cave, the statue, and the lighthouse below.
Phantom Files reminded me why I enjoy reading. Knowing Bill as I do, I see him on every page: his passion for the weird, his comprehensive knowledge of literature, and even his personal faith. This story isn't some generic cash grab; it's a tale only Bill could tell. And that, for me, is what makes literature compelling: seeing the world through someone else's eyes and gaining fresh insights along the way.
So far, there have been two books published in Phantom Files series. I look forward to reading the second! You can buy both of them here.
Twain's Treasure inspired me so much that I finally opened a copy of Tom Sawyer I bought last fall. Two things led me to buy the edition I did:
It was cheap. I found it at a library sale in Williamsburg, Virginia, alongside a copy of Huckleberry Finn. Both slipcased editions were only $3 apiece.
It featured paintings and line art by Norman Rockwell. How could I resist adding it to my Rockwell collection?
Tom Sawyer is one of those classics that, even if you haven't read it, it feels like you have because of its impact on our culture. For the life of me I can't recall when I first read it, or even if I have, so it's been a joy to either re-read it or read it for the first time. While the times have certainly changed since 1876, human nature hasn't, and Twain is brilliant in capturing that in all of its fullness and reminding us adults what it was like, honestly like, to have once been a child.
BTW, here’s a look at my Norman Rockwell nook.
Finally, while I should be working on my books and characters, my mind has kept circling back to The Three Investigators. So, to exorcise these spirits, I decided to commit them to paper. The plan was to keep it simple—just focus on their faces—nothing more. But then an idea struck me: what if they're in a library, much like where I first encountered them? And what if the mystery they are facing is The Gray Lady, who is said to haunt Williard Library?
Yeah! I had a clear vision for the piece and an entire night to do it. I'd knock it out and surprise everyone with a finished piece on Saturday morning. Well, my friends, sadly, it was not to be. It is late Friday evening as I am writing this, and I've only managed to create the loose sketch you see below.
As my enthusiasm for this idea has grown, so has my ambition. I'm now considering turning this sketch into a full-fledged painting. So stay tuned! It may take more than one week (I have other projects that are jealous for my attention), but I'll show you my progress as I go.
Until next time, Always Be Creating!
—Bill Wiist
The 3 investigators sketch is fun & it was good hearing your partner in the 4 Your Info pages is doing so well. Love those pages.