This is a novel about growing up in the rugged Adirondacks of New York State at the turn of the 19th century.

Strangers arrive by train in a small Adirondacks town in the late 1890s to spend the summer and end up influencing the life of 13-year-old Hollis Ingraham in ways he never anticipated.

Nearly half of all American high school students participate in sports teams. With a total of 7.6 million participants as of 2008, this makes the high school sports program in America the largest organized sports program in the world. Pruter’s work traces the history of high school sports from the student-led athletic clubs of the 1800s through to the establishment of educator control of high school sports under a national federation by the 1930s. Pruter’s research serves not only to highlight this rich history but also to provide new perspectives on how high school sports became the arena by which Americans fought for some of the most contentious issues in society, such as race, immigration and Americanization, gender roles, religious conflict, the role of the military in democracy, and the commercial exploitation of our youth.

"Joseph Benton has a Bible handed down from his famous ancestor Joseph Bonaparte, the former King of Spain and older brother to Napoleon. Inside the Bible is a cipher that family legend says leads to a magnificent treasure stolen from the Spanish Royal Treasury when King Joseph fled Spain. This exciting treasure hunt blends historical facts with a terrific story and complex characters creating tension pitting environmentalist vs. developer and friend vs. friend. The story takes the reader from Lake Bonaparte to Cranberry Lake, Tupper Lake, Saranac Lake, and Lake Placid. The search leads to murder, romance and intrigue that will keep you up at night wondering to yourself...could the legend be true?" -- cover.