Twelve Jars from Miller's Creek

About this book

In Tiller's Gap, half the town works at the quarry, and nobody wants to talk about the mornings Miller's Creek runs white as milk. When eleven-year-old Dess Kwiatkowski pulls up a trap full of dead crawdads, she fetches three friends and a spiral notebook, and the four of them start doing what the grown-ups won't: writing it down. Dates. Times. Twelve sealed jars. One name. The school custodian, Ovide Bassett, hasn't spoken a word in eight years. He was a court reporter once. He knows exactly what a record is worth — and what it costs to keep one. By the Monday after the town meeting, the friendship is in pieces, four pages are missing from the notebook, and Wen Buhl won't say anything at all. Ovide picks up a yellow legal pad and starts at the end.