The Sugar Creek Gang, Book #10
As I mentioned in a previous post (Palm Tree Manhunt), our return overseas has brought some extra blessings we didn’t foresee, and one was stumbling upon these old novels from the Sugar Creek series. My 13- and 11-year-old kids are loving them way more than they did when I tried reading the books to them at ages 8 and 6 (or earlier). There’s just enough adventure and just enough humor to keep them engaged, and there’s plenty of life lessons and spiritual discussions to keep me happy. These books are prime reading for this age group—and I’m not afraid to admit liking them myself.
This tenth novel is a great one, as it’s an adventure fit within what’s basically a 24-hour timespan. It doesn’t meander, as some of Hutchens’ books have done, but rather sticks to one major plot.
The red-headed narrator, Bill Collins, finds a hateful letter addressed to his family in the mailbox when no mail should be there, and he’s then summarily hounded and beaten by some unknown assailant when he makes his way to his friend’s house. Other letters also swirl within the Sugar Creek community, and lots of fingers are pointing blame. They mystery takes us all the way to the end of the book, so those of familiar with the series’ various characters spend most of our time trying to figure out who’s the culprit.
I loved that this story stays on task, though without all the side-plots and meandering thoughts, it actually did feel quite a bit shorter than other books in the series. This isn’t necessarily a problem for young readers today who can just grab the next book in line, but I must put myself in the shoes of Sugar Creek fans of the WWII era—with Hutchens averaging just 2 books per year up to this point, they must have felt sad to be done with his latest release in just an afternoon!
From what I can tell, there are 36 books in the Sugar Creek series spanning 25 years of publication. Most of his original readers likely didn’t stick with him as fans awaiting publications but likely have been like us, reading them in chunks decades later. Since I’ve only got a small handful left on my shelf at the moment, I plan to check places like Internet Archive and more for the titles we don’t have tangibly.
What gets me most excited is that my son (not generally a reader) loves these stories so much, he actually read Book #2, The Killer Bear on his own last week—a book we’d read several years ago but that he’d forgotten. This itself is a victory for me, so if you’ve got a youngin’ not willing to read much, I’d encourage you to read some of these books aloud and then see if they start reading more of them on their own. Worth the effort to see!
©2024 E.T.
Read More from The Sugar Creek Gang:
- #1 The Swamp Robber (1940)
- #2 The Killer Bear (1940)
- #3 The Winter Rescue (1940)
- #4 The Lost Campers (1941)
- #8 The Palm Tree Manhunt (1944)
- #10 The Mystery Thief (1946)
- #12 Screams in the Night (1947)