During the Christmas holidays in nineteenth-century Maine, Tobias Walton and his fellow companions in the Moosepath League become caught up in the lives of colorful associates of country lawyer Daniel Plainway, as he searches for the kidnapped son of a deceased friend. Adult/High School-It's 1896, and the mem-bers of the Moosepath League find their lives taking an adventurous turn when they acci-dentally meet up with lawyer Daniel Plain-way. He seeks help from the club in solving the disappearance of an orphaned boy known as "Bird." In the process, the Moosepathians become entangled in solving a mysterious rune attributed to Vikings, experience ghostly visitations, enjoy thrilling tales of Maine folklore, and provide entertaining episodes along the way. Although this is the conclusion to the story told in Cordelia Underwood (Viking, 1999), readers can easily pick up the story line through the sections entitled, "Daniel's Story." Reid deftly intertwines plots and subplots, providing a complex, yet involving story filled with comic scenes and engaging wordplay as well as serious moments. He picturesquely captures the snowy cold Maine winter, but is just as quick to describe the dangers of the weather, which plays a major role in the story. In sharp details, the author offers clearly defined portraits of the myriad char-acters, their manners, and customs. All of the figures become memorable individuals as they enter the story, distinctive in their personalities and mannerisms. An exciting and fun adventure.-Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Reid's expert appropriation of the benign world of Charles Dickens continues in this third volume of his richly entertaining saga (Cordelia Underwood, 1998; Mollie Peer, 1997).It's an agreeably overplotted farrago, set once again in Portland, Maine, and environs in 1896, and featuring the ineffably Pickwickian Tobias Walton, his stouthearted young comrade Sundry Moss, and their irresistibly ingenuous and gentlemanly fellow Moosepathians Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump. After some overstuffed early pages that creak and wheeze a bit making plot connections with the earlier books, Reid settles into the business of juxtaposing the odyssey of the heart undertaken by the eponymous Daniel, a lawyer who may know something about the orphaned boy Bird of Mollie Peer, with the Moosepathians' intricately interrelated separate ordeals and discoveries. These involve variously motivated searches for Viking artifacts, an elopement and an illegitimate birth, a ghostly visitation, a possibly sinister antiquarian society's quest for the lost city of Norumbega (now Bangor) located on the fabled northwest passage to Canada, a body found in the Portland harbor, the twice-told tale of The Rune and the Worm (a delicious amalgam of Native American and Norse mythologies), and the remarkable word boustrophedan. Also implicated, in cheerfully mystifying ways, are such memorable folk as expert woodsman Capital Gaines, the five elderly Pettengill sisters, secretive Ezra Burnbrake, and Tobias's rival for the love of matronly Phileda McCannon: Charleston Thistlecoat. If this engaging folderol doesn't charm your socks off, you've probably been reading too much Bret Easton Ellis and A.M. Homes. Reid really has mastered Dickens's techniques of cross-plotting and creating narrative echoes that function as both foreshadowing and revelation--not to mention comic characters so vivid and heartwarming you wish their crazily entangled stories would never end.And perhaps they won't, as an intriguing Epilogue and coy Author's Note slyly suggest. Long may the Moosepath League flourish. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Used Book in Good Condition