During the summer of 1894, the giant sequoia trees -- the oldest living things on earth -- are being felled for lumber in northern California. Francie finds a note in a hole of an old sequoia stump and recognizes her sister's handwriting. But Carrie died in an accident six years earlier. Could the secret still be important? Francie is determined to find out. When her search turns dangerous and she needs to get to St. Joseph fast, she's faced with the choice to either give up -- or to ride the flume, the rickety track that carries lumber from the mills in the mountains to the lumberyard in St. Joseph. Should Francie risk her life for the secret her sister fought to keep? * * * "She'd only heard of two men riding the flume successfully -- those two last summer. They had been arrested as soon as they got to St. Joseph. Two others had tried before that. One had ended up in the hospital, and the other man had been killed...."Her heart began to beat in slow, painful thuds. Was it such a crazy idea? Did she dare try it? Could she ride the flume to St. Joseph?"

Patricia Curtis Pfitsch lives on a ridge top farm in southwest Wisconsin with her partner, Jack, their dog, Gaea, and two annoying but lovable cats. They have three grown children, Hollis, Woody, and Jane. Ms. Pfitsch's award-winning stories and articles have appeared in various children's magazines, including Highlights and Cricket. She is also the author of Keeper of the Light and The Deeper Song.

"I was fascinated when I found out that the giant sequoias in California live to be thousands of years old," writes Patricia Curtis Pfitsch. "But I was horrified when I learned that in the 1890s, thousands of sequoias were cut down, even though their wood was so brittle that more than half of the trees shattered when they fell. Why would humans waste the long lives of such beautiful and ancient creatures? In my search for the answer to that question, Riding the Flume was born."