Chasing Secrets
Chasing Secrets
Chasing Secrets
Gennifer Choldenko
Newbery Honor–winning author Gennifer Choldenko deftly combines humor, tragedy, fascinating historical detail, and a medical mystery in this exuberant new novel.San Francisco, 1900. The Gilded Age. A fantastic time to be alive for lots of people . . . but not thirteen-year-old Lizzie Kennedy, stuck at Miss Barstow’s snobby school for girls. Lizzie’s secret passion is science, an unsuitable subject for finishing-school girls. Lizzie lives to go on house calls with her physician father. On those visits to his patients, she discovers a hidden dark side of the city—a side that’s full of secrets, rats, and rumors of the plague.The newspapers, her powerful uncle, and her beloved papa all deny that the plague has reached San Francisco. So why is the heart of the city under quarantine? Why are angry mobs trying to burn Chinatown to the ground? Why is Noah, the Chinese cook’s son, suddenly making Lizzie question everything she has known to be true? Ignoring the rules of race and class, Lizzie and Noah must put the pieces together in a heart-stopping race to save the people they love.Winner of a Los Angeles Public Library FOCAL (Friends of Children and Literature) AwardNominated for:Pennsylvania Young Reader’s Choice AwardsTennessee Volunteer State Book Award (Middle School division)Missouri Association of School Librarians (MASL) Readers AwardCalifornia Library Association’s Beatty Award, Eureka List

Book Details

Genre: 

  • Fiction
  • Historical Fiction
  • Mystery

Age Level: 

  • 8 - 12
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Thirteen-year-old Lizzie Kennedy is the main character of Chasing Secrets. Growing up in San Francisco is difficult in the 1900s. It becomes increasingly difficult when rumors of the plague are beginning to spread. Lizzie’s father, who is a doctor, denies that the plague has reached San Francisco. But if it hasn’t, then why is China Town under quarantine? Why has the Kennedy’s cook mysteriously disappeared?

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