Sixteen-year-old Oliver Puckle, news gatherer for the Concord Freeman in the summer of 1846, has his work cut out for him when word arrives of a gruesome murder at Walden Pond. It seems the only citizen who is not a suspect is the poetphilosopher Henry David Thoreau, who spent the night locked in the local jail for refusing to pay his poll tax. As Oliver leads the charge to unravel the mystery, he has much to learn from his colorful neighbors – among them Ralph Waldo Emerson and a feisty teenage Louisa May Alcott – but unexpectedly it is the recluse Thoreau himself who provides particular help to the investigation.
This posthumously published novel, set in the famously literary town of Concord, Massachusetts, is rich with intrigue and witty detail and features a foreword by the author’s son.