The Visconti House

In The Visconti House by Elsbeth Edgar, two young teenagers solve a mystery and learn to feel more comfortable with who they are. Laura Horton feels awkward and out of place at school.  Her parents both work from home; her father is a writer; her mother, an artist and sculptor and the Hortons live in an old rambling, crumbling mansion up on a hill.  Two things make her life bearable; her quest to find out about her house's original owner, Carlo Visconti, and an acquaintance/friendship with another "outcast" at school, Leon Murphy.

Leon and Laura try to solve the secrets behind this beautiful old home with it's huge ballroom, a lovely room painted with garden murals and the tangled plantings in the garden.  They learn of a possible unhappy romance.  They unearth a hidden cellar and in the process, they become fast friends and learn to be less worried about what their classmates might say to or about them.

I had trouble getting into this mystery because I had a hard time determining just how old the main characters were.  Laura seems younger than her probable 13/14 years.   And she seems to give up unless answers are handed to her.  As I read further, I remembered my own shyness at that age and my own inability to talk to my classmates if they weren't people I was completely comfortable with.   And I saw how important Laura's friendship with Leon was to uncovering the story of Carlo Visconti and the home he built for a woman who never lived in it.

The story behind the house and the man who built is really a framework for Edgar to write about the process of giving other people a chance instead of hiding behind uncertainty and shyness.  Laura and Leon are transformed by their search and what they find.