A Key in the Rhine

About this book

Cologne, 2025. On the Hohenzollern Bridge hang half a million padlocks, and twelve-year-old Wren Albrecht-Hale can hear every one of them hum. Her family are the secret Lockwardens, and Wren was the youngest ever to wear the Warden's ring. Then, on the night she heard her parents arguing about her mother's new job in England, she did the one forbidden thing: she picked open their lock. Now her father sleeps at his workshop, her grandmother has taken back the ring, and the lock's song is fading. By St Martin's Day it will be gone. The only way to close it is with its first key, which lies somewhere in the Rhine, inside a fish older than the bridge. To get it back, Wren will have to piece together how her parents fell in love, and to tell the truth.