This is an excellent mystery for Black History / Heritage Month, as the mystery is embedded in history and really what the main character, 12-year-old Candice Miller has to do, is unravel it from its historic roots to see it in a new way.
Candice's grandmother leaves her with a serious mystery to solve: many years before, when her grandmother was town manager of Lambert, she had the tennis courts dug up with bulldozers in search of a "treasure." She doesn't find it and is run out of town, humiliated, but determined to keep trying -- through encouraging her granddaughter, Candice's puzzle solving skills.
When Candice's grandmother dies, she and her mom go to Lambert to sell the old house. And that's where Candice meets Brandon Jones, and they become fast friends, although they're off to a rocky start. Together they begin piecing the bits and bobs of information together, and learn of a historic (in the sense that it changes several people's life-trajectories irreversibly) tennis match between Lambert's two high schools -- the Black high school and the all-white high school. When the Black high school wins, the trouble begins.
This is intricately interwoven into the search for the treasure, because things -- and most importantly people -- in Lambert are not always what they seem.
The prejudice of the time and of current day prevent or constrain several people from just being who they are, whether it's passing as white or not telling your kids you're gay, and the ramifications add up over the decades.
I won't spoil the ending, and how Candice and Brandon figure out where the treasure is, or who put it there, and why. There are several different points of view represented, as it's kind of impossible for Candice's POV to get the reader all the information needed to solve the mystery. You'll have to read it to enjoy it. It was one of our best reads of 2021.
