Amoss, B: Secret Lives

Set against the backdrop of 1930s New Orleans, Berthe Amoss's 1979 young adult mystery follows twelve-year-old Addie Agnew as she struggles to uncover the secret of her mother's death. Living with her spinster aunts in a house that's practically haunted, Addie was always told her mother was perfect and was swept off to sea with Addie's father in a Honduran tidal wave. But Addie suspects there's something her aunts aren't telling her, and it has something to do with the locked trunk in the attic. What's in the trunk? And what really happened to Addie's parents? In this classic story about family secrets and growing up, Addie will stop at nothing to discover truth about her mother, even if learning the truth will change everything forever.

Born and raised in New Orleans, Berthe Amoss has never stopped writing about her home city. She is the author and illustrator of twenty-eight children's and young adult books. Her picture book The Cajun Gingerbread Boy won a Children's Choice Award and The Chalk Cross was a finalist for the Edgar Allen Poe Award.