A Gem of Truth

July 25, 2022
Set in 1907, the simple but sweet second entry in Woodhouse’s Secrets of the Canyon series (after A Deep Divide) pits a woman against a pair of thieves in a race to find a treasure in the Grand Canyon. Julia Schultz has searched for a place to call home ever since the death of her parents when she was a child. As she moved from family to family, she developed a vivid imagination to cope with her loneliness, but, now in her 20s, she’s prone to telling fake stories to draw attention and “make her sound more interesting.” After she gets a job at the El Tovar hotel as a “Harvey Girl”—women who worked at restaurants and hotels owned by the Fred Harvey Company throughout the American West—she hopes to make a fresh start, and to that end she determines to find long-lost treasure rumored to be hidden in the Grand Canyon. She enlists the help of her God-fearing boss who encourages Julia to see herself as worthy of God’s love. However, Julia’s lies threaten to unravel the life she’s built, and she soon discovers she’s not the only one looking for the fortune. Readers will appreciate the twists that break up the sometimes low-stakes focus on Julia’s dishonesty. A straightforward moral lesson makes this a solid inspirational historical.