Book Review: Folk Secrets by Brent Wheelbarger

Reviewed by Eric Mayrhofer

A whirlwind adventure story that hops around history and the globe

At one point in Folk Secrets, the compelling young adult adventure novel by Brent Wheelbarger, ten-year-old Jonathan Quill finds himself hiding in a trunk. It’s chock-full of Civil War-era artifacts—an old rifle, a military uniform, little blood stains that hint at deadly battles—but there’s also something else in there: a mysterious Codex with entries of those who had the bad fortune to be its keeper in the past. One of them, a young Black boy named Ebenezer, also hid in that trunk once upon a time, and as Jonathan tries to evade capture from the shadowy forces seeking the Codex and its secrets, he realizes that “there would be no escape right now, not from the trunk or The Codex. So he kept reading about the other boy who hid in this trunk in 1853…”

This compression, this crowding of time and place all into close quarters, is one of Folk Secrets‘s truest strengths, driving home a theme of connectedness. Our lives, it seems to say, are not only the result of our choices, but partially mapped out by the choices of others, sometimes good, sometimes deadly, and forever weaving our lives together in intricate, unpredictable webs.

But if that sounds too heady, don’t worry: it’s all in the subtext. On the surface, Folk Secrets is a globetrotting yarn with high stakes, competing spy forces, and a secret treasure map touched by some of history’s famous hands.

After Jonathan inherits The Codex from his mentor P.R. Simms, strange and threatening men come to town looking to unlock its secrets, wrapping up Jonathan (and, eventually, his daughter and granddaughter) in a race to obtain a substance with more power than any of them could have imagined.

There are parts throughout the book when the focus on history truly sings. While the novel eventually brings villainous pirates into the fold (no spoilers—you’ll have to read it to find out why), the best parts aren’t supernatural or high-concept. They focus on real attitudes from the past. For instance, when Washington Irving (yes, that Irving, one of The Codex’s caretakers) is talking with a U.S. soldier in former Native American Territory, Irving says, “Ah, the red man…As best I can tell, they were doing quite well where they were.”

“Maybe so,” the soldier responds, “but we weren’t doing ‘quite well where they were,’ if you know what I mean.” In moments like these, the book doesn’t flinch from the darker parts of the past. It makes history’s injustices matter-of-fact, and that gives readers a tangible sense of time, place, and texture worth savoring.

The existence of these moments, however, is where readers might also find an Achilles heel. That exchange with Washington Irving and the soldier took place in 1832. Meanwhile, the book begins in the present day, before quickly jumping to 1963, before rewinding to 1829 and jumping from Oklahoma to Spain. While this isn’t unusual—the works of David Mitchell and Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land come to mind—those books often dedicate dozens of pages or multiple, sequential chapters to those periods. That approach gives readers a sense of grounding, and room for description, not just of settings and objects, but also of the complex emotions that characters can have in fantastical situations. Without a similar approach, this book doesn’t exactly give us the same opportunity to immerse ourselves deeply in the amazing concepts and thrilling elements—from its treasure hunt to its prophecies and mind-blowing fish-out-of-water moments readers may not expect.

Folk Secrets can be a little hard to get attached to at first. But once the adventure is locked in and the stakes finally become clear, it’s the kind of historical treasure hunt that could make National Treasure feel tame.

---

Thank you for reading Eric Mayrhofer’s book review of Folk Secrets by Brent Wheelbarger! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.