The Series

The NPS Mystery Series is a middle-grade (8-12) mystery series set that follows 13-year-old Jake Evans and his friends on a scavenger hunt through the national parks. It delights kids who want to discover the next clue. And it delights parents and teachers as they watch reluctant readers engrossed in books that take them into the natural world and deep into history. Below you’ll find more information about the series, a few sample illustrations, and a snippet from chapter one.

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The Story

Thirteen-year-old Jake Evans possesses something valuable: a scrapbook passed down to him by his grandfather who used it to document visits to the sixty-two United States National Parks. But it’s not just a book of pictures. Inside, Jake’s grandfather hid clues, codes, maps, and riddles leading, first Jake, and now his cousin, Wes, and friend Amber, on a scavenger hunt through the parks

The three families visit ten different national parks over the course of the summer. Each park is a book. And they begin in my favorite park, where I’ve spent many months, Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. From there, they travel to the Great Sand Dunes, then on to the Grand Canyon.

Illustrations

Each of the books will include twenty to thirty black-and-white sketches of waterfalls, mountains, wildlife, and some of the clues the kids discover on their quest. My hope is that the drawings will further ignite the imaginations of young readers.

Chapter 1 – 1880 – Somewhere Near Estes Park, Colorado

(All of the books shift between the past and the present. It makes the story feel like time travel).

“Sir, I’ve got the boy locked up in the tack shed.”

“Who is he?” asked the older man.

“Don’t know, Sir. Looks about sixteen, seventeen, maybe. He don’t resemble any of the families in these parts.”

“What exactly did he see, Ted?”

“He seen me burying it down by the creek, Sir.” 

The older man looked upset. He pinched the end of his gray mustache and stared at the shed with narrowed eyes.

Inside, the boy was frantically searching for a way to escape. He had tried the door, but it was latched from the outside. He turned his attention to the two windows, which faced west, where a blood-red sun was sinking behind the Rocky Mountains.

I’ve been here less than twenty-four hours and already found trouble, he thought to himself as he pulled on the frame of the first window. It wouldn’t budge. Must be nailed in place. Through the panes of wavy glass, he could see the two men outside, just ten paces from the small barn that held him. He recognized the first man, the one who had locked him up. He wore leather boots, dust-covered denim jeans, a white shirt, and a cowboy hat. The ranch hands who’d chased the boy down had called him “Boss.” But this was the first time he had seen the older man. He was tall, wore a gray, woolen suit, the kind he had seen rich gentlemen wear back in the city. The jacket half concealed a dark vest, and a bowler hat covered the man’s thinning silver hair. He pulled a pocket watch from his jacket and flipped it open. Its gold surface gleamed in the fading sunlight. Then he drew a thin-framed set of spectacles from the breast pocket of his jacket, put them on, and read the dial. Seeing this, the boy’s heart, which was already racing, began to slam against his ribcage. I don’t have much time. They’re deciding what to do with me.

He pushed on the second window. It slid on the wood track.

But to leave now would be foolish. The men would see him the instant he slipped through the window, and with the horses so close by, the ranch hands would quickly lasso him into the dirt, just as they had done down by the creek. He scanned the walls. They were covered with bridles, saddles, and coils of weathered gray rope. He looked up into the rafters, and the idea came to him in a flash.

While the men looked away, he gently slid the window frame along the track until it was open. He bent down and furiously untied his right boot, then scraped its mud-caked sole along the white paint of the windowsill. He put the boot back on, climbed into the rafters, and lay down. There he would wait.

Chapter 2 – Present Day – Ohio

Jake’s dad woke him before sunrise. “Time to get going.”

“Dad, what time is it?” Jake asked, rubbing his eyes.

“4 AM. I want us to get on the road before the traffic starts.”

“This is cruel and unusual punishment.”  

“You’re right. It’s cruel and unusual,” his dad replied and flicked on the light. “But it’s not punishment.”

Jake squinted and shielded his eyes from the light. “Sure feels like it.”

“Grandma has breakfast for you. If you want, you can sleep more while we drive.”

After changing out of his PJs and into jeans and a t-shirt, Jake Evans ambled down the creaky stairs of his grandparents’ old farmhouse, drawn by the scent of bacon and waffles. Moonlight streamed through a window, illuminating the framed photographs on the wall. There must have been over a hundred of them. Jake stopped to study his favorite. It was taken just two years ago on Jake’s eleventh birthday. In the photograph, Grandpa Evans wrapped his arm around Jake, who held the long handle of a shovel in his hands. Beside them was the apple tree they had planted, and behind them were twenty more trees just like it. Jake’s eyes were drawn to the smile on his grandpa’s face, and he was overcome by an unexpected wave of emotions. Warmth and confidence swirled inside his chest as he remembered that day and what it was like to plant the orchard with his grandpa. And there was sadness, the kind that tries to steal all the good memories away.

About six months ago, a few days after Thanksgiving, Jake’s grandfather had died. Kidney failure. And complications. Jake didn’t like that word, “complications.” He pushed those memories out of his mind and stared at the photograph, hoping the image of that day in the orchard would replace them.

Jake and his mom and dad were spending only one night at his grandparents’ house before their long drive to Colorado. Mr. Evans, Jake’s dad, wanted to check on her before leaving on their vacation. They would be gone for the next two months, traveling to ten different national parks.

Jake walked through the hallway and living room and into the kitchen, where his grandma stood at the stove. At seventy-nine years old, his grandmother could still hear footfall in the kitchen over the sound of crackling bacon.  

“You want your eggs fried or scrambled?” she asked.

“Scrambled.“Thanks, Grandma.” He sat down at the table, and his grandma placed a plate full of steaming waffles in front of him.

“You’ve got a big day ahead of you. Sounds like you three are driving straight through to Colorado.”

Jake nodded, his mouth full of waffles.

She leaned toward him and studied his face. “Either you’re just tired, or there’s something else going on.” She went back to the stove then asked, “Your mom said the school year didn’t end so great.” 

“Mom tells you everything, doesn’t she?”

“Most things. At least the things that matter.”

Jake’s grades were fine. The basketball season was okay. But things were not okay with Gabe and Alex. The three of them had been close friends for years. Then something had happened. Jake couldn’t quite understand what, but like a canoe you forget to tie up at night, they had drifted away from each other. The lunchtime conversations had changed. Gabe and Alex were into gaming now–something Jake didn’t care much about. Their words were like a foreign language, and he felt like he was looking in from the outside. Every now and then, Gabe and Alex would eat at another table. Then one day, Jake looked up and realized he was eating alone. 

Then Nick disappeared. At least that’s how it seemed to Jake. Last Fall, his brother moved an hour away for his first year of college. When Nick came home on the weekends, Jake forgot about feeling so alone. Then Nick got busy with classes and college stuff, and the weekend visits stopped. It was like Nick had evaporated. 

Then grandpa died.

No friends, no Nick, no Grandpa.  

He poked at his waffles. “Just missing Grandpa, I guess.”

His grandma sat down at the kitchen table across from him and reached out her hand. “I bet you do, Jake. As strange as it sounds, that’s a good thing. It hurts. But it says a whole lot about how much you loved him and how much he loved you.”

Jake squeezed her hand, nodded, and tried to smile. 

“Your Grandpa left you something.”

Jake put down his fork and watched her walk across the room to a drawer. She pulled it open, drew something out, then came back to the table and slid a small note across its wooden surface. In his grandpa’s handwriting, the envelope read “Jax.” It was the nickname his grandpa had given him. Jake carefully opened the envelope and pulled out a piece of paper.

“That’s strange,” Jake whispered to himself.

Jake sighed, and his shoulders fell. All he wanted was another adventure with his Grandpa. Instead, he had left Jake a confusing and sappy list of advice.

He read it again.

Then it struck him. How could he have missed it? A null cipher! It wasn’t the first time his grandpa had written him a note in code. Like this note, most of his birthday cards had been some kind of puzzle.

Jake grabbed a pencil that lay on the table and began to underline the first letter of each word of the first line. 

Always try to inspire curiosity.

He assembled the letters: A T T I C. 

Then the second line:

Seek help early. Learn from friends.

S H E L F  F

The third:

Now, understand my boy, every real treasure exploits neglect.

N U M B E R  T E N

“So, what does it say?” his grandma asked, placing the eggs and bacon on his plate.

“It’s a code,” Jake replied.

His grandma smiled. “That figures. It’s just like your grandpa to do something like that.”

“It says: Attic, Shelf F, Number 10.”

© 2022 Aaron Johnson