This is the first book in the popular Jan Calvin mystery series. The place is Mississippi, the year, 1963.... Growing up in the racially segregated South doesn't much bother 12-year-old Jan Calvin. She's rather clueless, always burying her nose in mystery books. When she stumbles upon a secret buried in the woods, though, she enters on a quest that whisks her out of her own world and into Thelma's world.Thelma is a girl with a dream. She follows Martin Luther King, Jr. on the radio and watches her father work to end school segregation and other Jim Crow laws. Someday she wants to be a Freedom Rider like her dad so she can make Mississippi a better place.Jan and Thelma quickly become entangled in a real-life mystery more complicated--and dangerous--than they expected. The girls are thwarted at every turn in their pursuit of truth. But once they learn friends can come in all colors--once they learn dreams can be shared--amazing discoveries follow.This enchanting coming-of-age tale brings an era of explosive social change up close and personal through the eyes of Jan and Thelma, girls of different races. Aimed at middle-school readers, Freedom Riders follows Jan and Thelma as they begin to experience the world with deepened empathy and understanding, culminating in a friendship they never expected to blossom.