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Peggy Henderson Adventure #2
Broken Bones
A vandalized burial in an abandoned pioneer cemetery brings 12-year-old Peggy Henderson and her elderly archaeologist friend Eddy to Golden, British Columbia, to excavate. The town dates back to the 1880s when most of the citizens were tough and rowdy miners and railway workers who rarely died of old age. Since the wooden burial markers disintegrated long ago, Peggy and Eddy have no way of knowing the dead mans identity. But when Eddy discovers the vertebrae at the base of the skull are crushed, a sure sign the cause of death was hanging, they have their first clue.
Peggy’s tendency to make quick judgments about others leads her to the conclusion that only bad people are hanged, so the man in the burial must have gotten what he deserved. Hoping to learn more about him that proves her beliefs, she is soon digging through dusty old newspapers at the small-town museum. It’s there that Peggy learns that sometimes good people do bad things.
Peggy’s tendency to make quick judgments about others leads her to the conclusion that only bad people are hanged, so the man in the burial must have gotten what he deserved. Hoping to learn more about him that proves her beliefs, she is soon digging through dusty old newspapers at the small-town museum. It’s there that Peggy learns that sometimes good people do bad things.
200 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
9 people want to read
About the author
Gina McMurchy-Barber
10 books11 followersGina McMurchy-Barber is an award winning Canadian author. Her books are favourites with teachers and librarians looking for stories that will touch the heart. Her latest book, The Jigsaw Puzzle King, was the winner of the 2021 Silver Birch Award and is nominated for three more awards in 2022. It's the story of 11 year old Warren coming to terms with how society judges his brother who has Down syndrome. Anyone with a family member with any kind of exceptionality will relate.
Gina's archaeology adventure series brings history to life. Themes include First Nations, building the railroad, fur trade, Vikings and more.
Gina's other passions in life include animals (she was a research assistant in Borneo with Birute Galdikas, studying orangutans), archaeology (she earned her degree from Simon Fraser University), writing (she is working on her eighth book for kids), and teaching (she has been a classroom teacher for over twenty years, and writes plays and stories that inspire her students.)
Gina started writing while studying archaeology at university. This led her to study journalism and become a freelance writer. After the birth of her two sons she discovered the amazing world of children's books.
In 2004 Gina received the Governor General's Award for Teaching Excellence in Canadian History. Since then she has been nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award, the Canadian Library Association Book Award, BC Book Prize, Saskatchewan's Willow Awards, the Silver Birch Awards, Hackmatack and various other book awards.
Gina's books incorporate her love of history, archaeology, children and animals. She continues to teach and visit schools to talk about her work.
Gina's archaeology adventure series brings history to life. Themes include First Nations, building the railroad, fur trade, Vikings and more.
Gina's other passions in life include animals (she was a research assistant in Borneo with Birute Galdikas, studying orangutans), archaeology (she earned her degree from Simon Fraser University), writing (she is working on her eighth book for kids), and teaching (she has been a classroom teacher for over twenty years, and writes plays and stories that inspire her students.)
Gina started writing while studying archaeology at university. This led her to study journalism and become a freelance writer. After the birth of her two sons she discovered the amazing world of children's books.
In 2004 Gina received the Governor General's Award for Teaching Excellence in Canadian History. Since then she has been nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award, the Canadian Library Association Book Award, BC Book Prize, Saskatchewan's Willow Awards, the Silver Birch Awards, Hackmatack and various other book awards.
Gina's books incorporate her love of history, archaeology, children and animals. She continues to teach and visit schools to talk about her work.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 30, 2022
The second in the Peggy Henderson series, Broken Bones is set in Golden, B.C. - now not much more than a truck-stop in the Rockies along the Trans-Canada highway. There's a Husky station and a restaurant attached to it... But once upon a time, it was, according to this book, a hell-hole full of trigger-happy, brawling rogues, drunken miners, desperate subsistance farmers and abused railway builders.
The book opens with a prologue set in the late 1800s, and describes the experiences of eighteen year old William Maguire as he is executed for murder by hanging. William's story leading up to his execution is told through historical flashbacks (these pages written entirely in italics, in a font that is not gentle on the eyes). There are also newspaper clippings, but these are just text boxes - no effort was made to use an old-fashioned type-font or to make these look like the newspaper clippings they were meant to be. I thought Dundurn messed that one up, badly. Such an easy thing to do, with basic Microsoft Office software, even. Nevermind.
I don't know.... these books were written by a school teacher who did some undergraduate work in archaeology. They read like they were written by a school teacher who did some undergraduate work in archaeology. This one is full of historical facts and dates, and, oddly, disjointed Shakespeare quotes (always followed up by Play title, Act and Scene numbers by another character. Clunky).
There are a few major issues I have with the premise, here. Firstly, why a random teenager is invited, during the school year, to accompany Prof. and Head of the Provincial Archaeology Branch Edwina "Eddy" McKay, on a dig in a cemetery on the other side of the province. I already had this problem with book one, where the connection was flimsy enough (she happened to live at her aunt's house, whose garden was the dig site) - for a sequel, there should have been quite a lot of information regarding Peggy's subsequent deepening of her relationship with McKay, some sort of bursary or enrolment in a Young Archaeologist's Club or special programme or scholarship/internship for high school students, and, most crucially, more character development put into Peggy. If she was a typical teenager, it would be entirely possible that she had lost interest in archaeology since the first dig and gotten really into jazz dance or some guy or AnimalCrossing. There should have been so much more here to explain not only the premise of the plot, but the motivations of the characters. Why should McKay bother with Peggy at all? Surely McKay is surrounded by keen Archaeology students and would have no lack of legal-age, qualified undergrads keen to boost their C.V.s. Also - is the Province so cash-strapped that they're sending elderly archaeologists out solo to dig trenches?! I think not!
Peggy's still a wooden, unrelatable, boring, boring, boring character. She's got a smart mouth and some pretty basic mood swings. That's it. I don't want to rag on this author, but there are adult characters here (i.e. Aunt Margaret) who are 'clueless' about teenagers and cannot relate to them. On the otherhand, there are characters such as Dr. McKay, who are meant to be seen as super gifted with the young... and it just doesn't ring true. I honestly went and looked up the author (I assumed she had no children of her own and limited exposure to kids. She's a mother of two and a full-time elementary school teacher. Apart from some contemporary lingo and generalized sass, a real nuanced understanding of the inner life of a teen is strangely absent). There's just a lot missing 'internally' in the characters, even the adults. It makes the dialogue clunky and contrived.
The other big gripe (and I believe another reviewer touched on it already) is a lack of scene setting. Yes, the mountains are described, I guess. Yes, some flora and fauna, and street names, etc., are cursorily mentioned. There's a real lack of atmosphere and setting, somehow. I never felt as if I was ever 'really there'. Also, and I only noticed this because I'm reading these as part of the August MG Reading Challenge - Peggy's story is set "on the first long weekend after school started for the year". Which, in British Columbia, would be Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving weekend, and no mention of that at all. Hmm.
The new characters in this one - Aunt Norma from Golden, Sam "Tristan" McLeod (local Shakespeare-obsessed goth and ne'er-do-well/teenage scapegoat), "Uncle" Henry Murphy (bowler hat-wearing local historian/operator of Golden's museum), and goofy (inept, incompentent, unprofessional) RCMP Officer "Skip" Hopkins (think bumbling PC Penhale from 'Doc Martin') aren't very convincing at all. The "whodunnit" on the vandalism front can be immediately guessed at.
Also, I'd have liked to have heard MUCH more about the historic Swiss cottages that were referenced. Many Swiss architects went to B.C. to help build the tricky mountain stretches of the railways (they are the experts, after all!). They weren't mentioned at all here, but their homes were. Huh.
All in all, one of those sorts of books that you'd expect to get assigned in school, full of local history, etc. And about as interesting. The skillful writing just isn't there - it's functional, but not captivating, unfortunately. I should like, ideally, to be able to contrast these to books set in B.C. written by Julie Lawson, and also the Hannah and the Spindle Whorl series by Carol Anne Shaw. I read The Ghost of Soda Creek by Ann Walsh so long ago that I can't give an accurate comparison. But for sure this series isn't shining brighter than those, and perhaps even less so. Ah well. Not an award-winner, and, this is going to sound extremely mean but I feel I ought to say it - written by a Canadian author with this much Canadian content (and you can scale both of those metrics down to the Provincial level in this case, too) - this book could have been shortlisted easily for several regional or national awards, but wasn't.
I bought the whole series, some of it necessarily secondhand as it was out of print, because I was so excited by the concept. So far, I am regretting it. Maybe my expectations were simply too high. I'm also significantly older than the target audience, and by extension, much better read. ;)
The book opens with a prologue set in the late 1800s, and describes the experiences of eighteen year old William Maguire as he is executed for murder by hanging. William's story leading up to his execution is told through historical flashbacks (these pages written entirely in italics, in a font that is not gentle on the eyes). There are also newspaper clippings, but these are just text boxes - no effort was made to use an old-fashioned type-font or to make these look like the newspaper clippings they were meant to be. I thought Dundurn messed that one up, badly. Such an easy thing to do, with basic Microsoft Office software, even. Nevermind.
I don't know.... these books were written by a school teacher who did some undergraduate work in archaeology. They read like they were written by a school teacher who did some undergraduate work in archaeology. This one is full of historical facts and dates, and, oddly, disjointed Shakespeare quotes (always followed up by Play title, Act and Scene numbers by another character. Clunky).
There are a few major issues I have with the premise, here. Firstly, why a random teenager is invited, during the school year, to accompany Prof. and Head of the Provincial Archaeology Branch Edwina "Eddy" McKay, on a dig in a cemetery on the other side of the province. I already had this problem with book one, where the connection was flimsy enough (she happened to live at her aunt's house, whose garden was the dig site) - for a sequel, there should have been quite a lot of information regarding Peggy's subsequent deepening of her relationship with McKay, some sort of bursary or enrolment in a Young Archaeologist's Club or special programme or scholarship/internship for high school students, and, most crucially, more character development put into Peggy. If she was a typical teenager, it would be entirely possible that she had lost interest in archaeology since the first dig and gotten really into jazz dance or some guy or AnimalCrossing. There should have been so much more here to explain not only the premise of the plot, but the motivations of the characters. Why should McKay bother with Peggy at all? Surely McKay is surrounded by keen Archaeology students and would have no lack of legal-age, qualified undergrads keen to boost their C.V.s. Also - is the Province so cash-strapped that they're sending elderly archaeologists out solo to dig trenches?! I think not!
Peggy's still a wooden, unrelatable, boring, boring, boring character. She's got a smart mouth and some pretty basic mood swings. That's it. I don't want to rag on this author, but there are adult characters here (i.e. Aunt Margaret) who are 'clueless' about teenagers and cannot relate to them. On the otherhand, there are characters such as Dr. McKay, who are meant to be seen as super gifted with the young... and it just doesn't ring true. I honestly went and looked up the author (I assumed she had no children of her own and limited exposure to kids. She's a mother of two and a full-time elementary school teacher. Apart from some contemporary lingo and generalized sass, a real nuanced understanding of the inner life of a teen is strangely absent). There's just a lot missing 'internally' in the characters, even the adults. It makes the dialogue clunky and contrived.
The other big gripe (and I believe another reviewer touched on it already) is a lack of scene setting. Yes, the mountains are described, I guess. Yes, some flora and fauna, and street names, etc., are cursorily mentioned. There's a real lack of atmosphere and setting, somehow. I never felt as if I was ever 'really there'. Also, and I only noticed this because I'm reading these as part of the August MG Reading Challenge - Peggy's story is set "on the first long weekend after school started for the year". Which, in British Columbia, would be Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving weekend, and no mention of that at all. Hmm.
The new characters in this one - Aunt Norma from Golden, Sam "Tristan" McLeod (local Shakespeare-obsessed goth and ne'er-do-well/teenage scapegoat), "Uncle" Henry Murphy (bowler hat-wearing local historian/operator of Golden's museum), and goofy (inept, incompentent, unprofessional) RCMP Officer "Skip" Hopkins (think bumbling PC Penhale from 'Doc Martin') aren't very convincing at all. The "whodunnit" on the vandalism front can be immediately guessed at.
Also, I'd have liked to have heard MUCH more about the historic Swiss cottages that were referenced. Many Swiss architects went to B.C. to help build the tricky mountain stretches of the railways (they are the experts, after all!). They weren't mentioned at all here, but their homes were. Huh.
All in all, one of those sorts of books that you'd expect to get assigned in school, full of local history, etc. And about as interesting. The skillful writing just isn't there - it's functional, but not captivating, unfortunately. I should like, ideally, to be able to contrast these to books set in B.C. written by Julie Lawson, and also the Hannah and the Spindle Whorl series by Carol Anne Shaw. I read The Ghost of Soda Creek by Ann Walsh so long ago that I can't give an accurate comparison. But for sure this series isn't shining brighter than those, and perhaps even less so. Ah well. Not an award-winner, and, this is going to sound extremely mean but I feel I ought to say it - written by a Canadian author with this much Canadian content (and you can scale both of those metrics down to the Provincial level in this case, too) - this book could have been shortlisted easily for several regional or national awards, but wasn't.
I bought the whole series, some of it necessarily secondhand as it was out of print, because I was so excited by the concept. So far, I am regretting it. Maybe my expectations were simply too high. I'm also significantly older than the target audience, and by extension, much better read. ;)
October 2, 2011
When Broken Bones first came to my attention I noticed two things about it right away. It takes place in Golden B.C., and its about archeology.
Now when I was thirteen my dad started dating a woman who lived on a communal acreage up in the kootenays (just outside of Silverton in fact); and the eclectic community up there, coupled with the breath taking scenery left me with enough strange tales to write my own book. Bathtubs on back porches, outhouses with no doors, picnic brunches at 7am where we ate pancakes with chop sticks, and did I mention the nudy beaches and the pie pot luck at the outdoor kitchen? It was certainly a learning experience for a prairie city girl like myself. However, outside of the endless array of non-traditional toilets, I loved it and still do (on the very rare occasion that I still get out there). The idea that this story was going to throw a 12 year old girl into Golden without warning seemed almost to good to be true.
I had not read the previous Peggy Henderson Adventure, Reading the Bones, so I was new to Peggy. Thus I have to say, some of my initial impressions of her might not be the same if I had read the series as it was intended.
From Dundurn Press:
A vandalized burial in an abandoned pioneer cemetery brings 12-year-old Peggy Henderson and her elderly archaeologist friend Eddy to Golden, British Columbia, to excavate. The town dates back to the 1880s when most of the citizens were tough and rowdy miners and railway workers who rarely died of old age. Since the wooden burial markers disintegrated long ago, Peggy and Eddy have no way of knowing the dead man’s identity. But when Eddy discovers the vertebrae at the base of the skull are crushed, a sure sign the cause of death was hanging, they have their first clue. Peggy’s tendency to make quick judgments about others leads her to the conclusion that only bad people are hanged, so the man in the burial must have gotten what he deserved. Hoping to learn more about him that proves her beliefs, she is soon digging through dusty old newspapers at the small-town museum. It’s there that Peggy learns that sometimes good people do bad things.
The story is fast paced, and it gets off the ground really quite quickly, however my initial impression of Peggy was that her voice didn't seem 12 to me, it felt a lot younger. I have to admit it's been awhile since I've hung out with a twelve year old, but when you compare her voice to say Harry Potter (in book two) or Percy Jackson (also in the second book), I felt like her voice seemed more around 9 then 12. Twelve is that tricky tween period, and I could be wrong, but I don't feel like she would be saying things like:
I was beginning to think she'd split her beam... or cracked her noggin... or flipped her lid
So for the first part of the book her voice didn't seem believable to me.
I really enjoyed the cross over of the story from William Maguire in the past and Peggy and Eddy's excavation. The use of the newspaper articles and then the story from William's perspective was a nice combination. It also really nicely illustrated a little know bit of Canadian history talking about the mining and the mining towns in the mountains which were notoriously dangerous.
Since I was just a year older than Peggy the first time I went out there and was also very interested in history and archeology at the time I felt like I could really relate to the story in some ways. Her impressions of the town, it's strangeness to her and the discovery of some of Canada's mining history were very familiar, the ghost town of Sandon left a huge impression on me, so I could see how her graveyard would be fascinating for her. However I feel like a major opportunity was missed. My experiences out in the Kootenay region at that age were sooo colourful and crazy that Peggy's adventure out there seemed staid in comparison.
By the end of the book I was on board with the story and enjoying it's strange little twists and turns, but I have to say it wasn't as unusual or as Canadian in flavour as I had been expecting when I picked it up so I was somewhat disappointed in it. So if you haven't had a colourful Kootenay stay and gloried in the eclectic arts/hippies/loggers community for any length of time, then chances are you may enjoy this story a bit more than me. But just as an aside, what are you waiting for already? Make your next vacation a Kootenay one, you will not regret it!
Now when I was thirteen my dad started dating a woman who lived on a communal acreage up in the kootenays (just outside of Silverton in fact); and the eclectic community up there, coupled with the breath taking scenery left me with enough strange tales to write my own book. Bathtubs on back porches, outhouses with no doors, picnic brunches at 7am where we ate pancakes with chop sticks, and did I mention the nudy beaches and the pie pot luck at the outdoor kitchen? It was certainly a learning experience for a prairie city girl like myself. However, outside of the endless array of non-traditional toilets, I loved it and still do (on the very rare occasion that I still get out there). The idea that this story was going to throw a 12 year old girl into Golden without warning seemed almost to good to be true.
I had not read the previous Peggy Henderson Adventure, Reading the Bones, so I was new to Peggy. Thus I have to say, some of my initial impressions of her might not be the same if I had read the series as it was intended.
From Dundurn Press:
A vandalized burial in an abandoned pioneer cemetery brings 12-year-old Peggy Henderson and her elderly archaeologist friend Eddy to Golden, British Columbia, to excavate. The town dates back to the 1880s when most of the citizens were tough and rowdy miners and railway workers who rarely died of old age. Since the wooden burial markers disintegrated long ago, Peggy and Eddy have no way of knowing the dead man’s identity. But when Eddy discovers the vertebrae at the base of the skull are crushed, a sure sign the cause of death was hanging, they have their first clue. Peggy’s tendency to make quick judgments about others leads her to the conclusion that only bad people are hanged, so the man in the burial must have gotten what he deserved. Hoping to learn more about him that proves her beliefs, she is soon digging through dusty old newspapers at the small-town museum. It’s there that Peggy learns that sometimes good people do bad things.
The story is fast paced, and it gets off the ground really quite quickly, however my initial impression of Peggy was that her voice didn't seem 12 to me, it felt a lot younger. I have to admit it's been awhile since I've hung out with a twelve year old, but when you compare her voice to say Harry Potter (in book two) or Percy Jackson (also in the second book), I felt like her voice seemed more around 9 then 12. Twelve is that tricky tween period, and I could be wrong, but I don't feel like she would be saying things like:
I was beginning to think she'd split her beam... or cracked her noggin... or flipped her lid
So for the first part of the book her voice didn't seem believable to me.
I really enjoyed the cross over of the story from William Maguire in the past and Peggy and Eddy's excavation. The use of the newspaper articles and then the story from William's perspective was a nice combination. It also really nicely illustrated a little know bit of Canadian history talking about the mining and the mining towns in the mountains which were notoriously dangerous.
Since I was just a year older than Peggy the first time I went out there and was also very interested in history and archeology at the time I felt like I could really relate to the story in some ways. Her impressions of the town, it's strangeness to her and the discovery of some of Canada's mining history were very familiar, the ghost town of Sandon left a huge impression on me, so I could see how her graveyard would be fascinating for her. However I feel like a major opportunity was missed. My experiences out in the Kootenay region at that age were sooo colourful and crazy that Peggy's adventure out there seemed staid in comparison.
By the end of the book I was on board with the story and enjoying it's strange little twists and turns, but I have to say it wasn't as unusual or as Canadian in flavour as I had been expecting when I picked it up so I was somewhat disappointed in it. So if you haven't had a colourful Kootenay stay and gloried in the eclectic arts/hippies/loggers community for any length of time, then chances are you may enjoy this story a bit more than me. But just as an aside, what are you waiting for already? Make your next vacation a Kootenay one, you will not regret it!
February 25, 2022
This book does not hold a candle to the first one in the series, Reading the Bones. I did not like the historical story in the second one at all. I also didn’t like Peggy’s behaviour in much of this book
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews