Book 4: The First Ground

Some ground holds more than what was planted in it.

When Nora maps an 1843 land survey against modern Millville, the numbers tell a story that nobody in town has been telling. The east-side oak park - where local children have played for a hundred years - is a burial ground. Seven families built homes, a school, and a community on this land before Millville existed. Seven families were forced off it. And for more than a hundred and seventy years, everyone who walked through that park had no idea what they were walking over.

The Millville Meddlers have spent two years following the history where it leads. Now it has led them to a name: Joseph Archer, who lives thirty miles away and has been carrying his family's oral history his entire life, waiting to learn whether any of it was true.

It is true. Every word of it.

But confirming the history is not the same as doing right by it. What does it mean to restore a record that an entire town has spent a hundred and seventy years refusing to keep? What do four thirteen-year-olds do with a truth this size?

The First Ground is the fourth book in the Millville Mysteries - a mystery series for middle-grade readers set in a small Ohio town where history has a way of refusing to stay buried. Each book stands on its own, but readers who begin at the beginning will find a thread that runs deeper with every entry.