The Lost Cipher

By Michael Oechsle

Lucas has just lost his father in Afghanistan and to help him cope, his grandmother sends him to Camp Kawani. While there, he learns of the lost treasure of Thomas Jefferson Beale, a local legend of a hoard of gold buried in the mountains 200 years ago. The location is encrypted in a set of codes no one has ever been able to decipher. Lucas becomes obsessed with finding the gold to save his home and leads his newfound friends into a dangerous mission into the wilderness to uncover it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company
• Release date: May 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9780807580646

Michael Oechsle

Michael Oechsle teaches elementary school art in the historic town of Hillsborough, North Carolina. He holds a business degree from the University of Virginia and another in Landscape Architecture from the University of Washington. He has been an advertising executive, a park designer, a professional photographer, and a stay-at-home dad.

Reviews for The Lost Cipher

[mrslabraden · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Lost Cipher was a little bit of a disappointment. With a name like The Lost Cipher, I expected this book to be all about a treasure hunt, but most of the book is about a boy named Lucas who goes to a summer camp for kids who have lost a parent. He meets other kids there including Alex and George who have also lost parents as well as a bully named Zach. Lucas, Alex, and George leave their hiking group and get lost. When Alex gets hurt, they have to find and accept help from a grizzly old mountain man named Creech. At the very end of the story, the secret of the treasure is revealed, but it just seems like too much of a coincidence to be believable. Overall, the story was a well written wilderness survival tale that had a little bit about a long lost treasure as part of the story.

[ftbooklover · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Lost Cipher was a little bit of a disappointment. With a name like The Lost Cipher, I expected this book to be all about a treasure hunt, but most of the book is about a boy named Lucas who goes to a summer camp for kids who have lost a parent. He meets other kids there including Alex and George who have also lost parents as well as a bully named Zach. Lucas, Alex, and George leave their hiking group and get lost. When Alex gets hurt, they have to find and accept help from a grizzly old mountain man named Creech. At the very end of the story, the secret of the treasure is revealed, but it just seems like too much of a coincidence to be believable.
Overall, the story was a well written wilderness survival tale that had a little bit about a long lost treasure as part of the story.