{"id":5084,"date":"2025-12-09T11:24:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T11:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=5084"},"modified":"2025-12-09T11:24:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T11:24:08","slug":"book-review-folk-secrets-by-brent-wheelbarger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=5084","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Folk Secrets by Brent Wheelbarger"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Folk Secrets<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

by Brent Wheelbarger<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong> Young Adult Fiction \/ Adventure<\/p>\n

ISBN: <\/strong>9798218999872<\/p>\n

Print Length:<\/strong> 456 pages<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Reviewed by Eric Mayrhofer<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>A whirlwind adventure story that hops around history and the globe<\/strong><\/h2>\n

At one point in Folk Secrets<\/em>, the compelling young adult adventure novel by Brent Wheelbarger, ten-year-old Jonathan Quill finds himself hiding in a trunk. It\u2019s chock-full of Civil War-era artifacts\u2014an old rifle, a military uniform, little blood stains that hint at deadly battles\u2014but there\u2019s 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 \u201cthere 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\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This compression, this crowding of time and place all into close quarters, is one of Folk Secrets<\/em>\u2018s 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.<\/p>\n

But if that sounds too heady, don\u2019t worry: it\u2019s all in the subtext. On the surface, Folk Secrets<\/em> is a globetrotting yarn with high stakes, competing spy forces, and a secret treasure map touched by some of history\u2019s famous hands.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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\u2014you\u2019ll have to read it to find out why), the best parts aren\u2019t supernatural or high-concept. They focus on real attitudes from the past. For instance, when Washington Irving (yes, that Irving, one of The Codex\u2019s caretakers) is talking with a U.S. soldier in former Native American Territory, Irving says, \u201cAh, the red man\u2026As best I can tell, they were doing quite well where they were.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe so,\u201d<\/em><\/strong> the soldier responds, \u201cbut we weren\u2019t doing \u2018quite well where they were,\u2019 if you know what I mean.\u201d<\/em><\/strong> In moments like these, the book doesn\u2019t flinch from the darker parts of the past. It makes history\u2019s injustices matter-of-fact, and that gives readers a tangible sense of time, place, and texture worth savoring.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t unusual\u2014the works of David Mitchell and Anthony Doerr\u2019s Cloud Cuckoo Land come to mind\u2014those 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\u2019t exactly give us the same opportunity to immerse ourselves deeply in the amazing concepts and thrilling elements\u2014from its treasure hunt to its prophecies and mind-blowing fish-out-of-water moments readers may not expect.<\/p>\n

Folk Secrets<\/em> 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\u2019s the kind of historical treasure hunt that could make National Treasure feel tame.<\/p>\n

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Thank you for reading Eric Mayrhofer\u2019s book review of Folk Secrets <\/em>by Brent Wheelbarger! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.<\/p>\n

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The post Book Review: Folk Secrets by Brent Wheelbarger<\/a> appeared first on Independent Book Review<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Folk Secrets by Brent Wheelbarger Genre: Young Adult Fiction \/ Adventure ISBN: 9798218999872 Print Length: 456 pages Amazon Bookshop 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5084"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}