Elizabeth Enright

A few hours after Garnet Linden found a silver thimble in the dried-up river bed, the rains came to end the long drought on the Wisconsin farm.

Portia and her cousin Julian discover adventure in a hidden colony of forgotten summer houses on the shores of a swampy lake.

The Melendy family moves to a house in the country where a secret room, a cupola, a stable, and a brook provide Mona, Rush, Randy, and Oliver with adventures far different from the city life to which they are accustomed.

Eleven-year-old Portia and her family return with cousin Julian to the site they visited the previous summer, this time to take possession of a large Victorian house, unoccupied for fifty years and full of treasures and secrets.