The premise behind this story intrigued me. Old houses have their own history-bad and good. What would you do if, while you were renovating an old house, you found an intriguing mystery, even if it was years old? If you had a chance of solving that mystery, would you? Or would you leave it buried in the past? Would you want someone digging in your past, your tragedies? If someone you loved just disappeared, what would you do?

Abigail Sutton is a woman who has faced both uncertainty and tragedy in her past. First when Joel, her husband, went to the store and never came home. According to the police, he just got tired of married life and left Abigail, though deep in her heart she knew different. Now two years later Joel’s body and car are found in a ravine. The car was stripped and Joel the victim of a mugging gone wrong.

It had taken her some time to figure it out but she knew life had more to offer than a lousy job as a graphic artist and an empty apartment. So with that insight, she was in search of a new life, in search of that small town feeling where people were truly neighbors and not just some nameless person next door.

When she sees the small town of Spookie she is reminded of her old hometown. She spends the day getting to know the town and its people. By the end of the day she knows that this where she wants to be. Abby, with the help of real estate agent Martha Sikeston, starts looking for a house. When Martha shows her this rundown little house, she knows that it’s the one for her.

The old Summers house has its own tragic past. The house had been left to sisters Edna and Emily Summers. It was left abandoned after Edna died with no family to claim it. Thirty years earlier Emily and her two children just disappeared into the night. Of course, rumors ran wild at the time-some said that she ran away to be with a boyfriend, others said she was on the run from her abusive ex-husband, but whatever the truth, she was never heard from again.

As Abby begins to clean and restore the old house, she begins to find scraps of paper with notes and drawings on them done by the Summers children, Jenny and Christopher. These little bits of paper shed an unhappy light on the children’s lives. There are hints of possible abuse in the notes, but who is the abuser, Edna or Emily? Abby feels for the children as the notes reveal the possibility of them being starved. Abby knows what it is to be hungry, as a child there was never enough food even though her father was a hard working provider.

As the summer unfolds so do the notes revealing more of that long ago summer. Abby, along with retired Chicago cop, Frank Lester who is also an old friend of the Summers family, get drawn deeper and deeper into the mystery of what truly happened to Emily and her children. Not only are Frank and Abby drawn into the mystery but so is the whole town as they try to start remembering the last days the Summers family spent among them. But someone among them doesn’t want what happened that summer remembered, and they will go to any length to keep the truth from being discovered.

Will Abby and Frank be able to discover the truth about that long ago summer? Who is the person behind the mysterious incidents happening now? Will Abby and Frank be able to deal with the feelings developing between them?

Kathryn Meyer Griffith’s Scraps of Paper is an engaging story of what happens when you go digging into the past and the possible consequences. It also has an underlying story about dealing with what life hands you and finding the strength to move on. Both Frank and Abby are strong characters they have had to deal with the loss of a loved one and to learn to deal with that loss. You find yourself drawn to them and to all the quirky people who live in the little town of Spookie. In the end you want to know what happened in the old house so many years earlier. I’ll be looking forward to more books about this quaint little town.

Reviewed By Theresa
© March 2006