Wrestling with quandaries small and large--there's nothing like it to lift a 12-year-old girl from the humdrum vagaries of life in La Porte, a small resort town whose crown jewel, the Hotel Paradise, is drifting into threadbare but dignified obscurity. Emma, who has lived at the hotel all her life (her mother is the hotel's cook), is a charming mix of David Copperfield, Scout Finch, Harriet the Spy, and Rudyard Kipling's mongoose, whose motto is "Go and Find Out." In Hotel Paradise, Emma tried to unravel the mystery surrounding the 40-year-old drowning death of young Mary- Evelyn Devereau. In Cold Flat Junction, that death takes on new resonance with the murder of Fern Queen. Fern was the daughter of Ben Queen and his wife Rose Devereau, Mary-Evelyn's aunt. Ben spent 20 years in prison for Rose's murder, and Fern's body is found just days after Ben is paroled.
Convinced of Ben's innocence, Emma sets out to track down the real killer. Her investigations mirror a delicate web of small-town relationships, expectations, and preconceptions. She slips through diners, garages, abandoned houses, and train stations, befriending taxi drivers, schoolteachers, and poachers: "You have to sneak up on what you want to know; you have to peek through windows at the facts so they won't run off and hide. You cannot go smashing through doors." When Emma looks through windows, she sees not only facts, but dreams, questions, and possibilities. Her quest is for answers, certainly, but also for her place in the world she interrogates so persistently.
