This first novel in the Delta Mysteries Series of eight total introduces the reader to the small fictionalized town of Willow Springs, California, and to Carlotta Stevens, a newly transplanted New Yorker, her mother and father and the six neighborhood friends who call themselves the Webster Street Gang. In the first novel we also meet Miss Simon, a woman with an unusual past who also plays a part in some of the future novels.

Carlotta is eleven years old. She has a secret that will become part of everything she does in the current and future novels.