[nice clean tight copy, minor shelfwear; jacket has small tears and very slight paper loss at top corners and top of spine, spine slightly browned]. (line drawings) Young adult novel about a small-town girl who has wanted to be a newspaperwoman since she was in high school, but whose dreams of college followed by a career in journalism are stymied by her family's financial difficulties. Determined to earn her own money for college, she lands a summer job at the local newspaper -- then gets a break when she has a chance to solve the town's greatest mystery. (And thank goodness the town is called Hopewood, so, you know, she won't get discouraged.) The author was the editor of a weekly newspaper in Spokane, Washington, and had written and published thirty-some short stories before tackling this, her first novel.