By SOPHIE RUSKAY

Illustrated by Janet D’Amato

Judy is a young girl just past her fifteenth year. Her parents are musicians—staff members at the Music School at Aspen—and they are anxious for her to share with them some of the enchantment of the famed music festival in Colorado.

But for Judy other plans and other dreams are more important. A part in the new theatre group? Romance? Adventure? Anything but the dreary routine of piano lessons and practice. In her attempt to escape the discipline of the musician’s life, she explores Aspen and inadvertently finds herself caught up in the lore of the early mining history of that community. Baby Doe, the old Opera House, the ghost town of Ashcroft are mysterious wonders which begin to awaken in her a new interest in her surroundings. Her meeting with Karl, a talented refugee from Nazi Austria, and their adventures together on the snowy mountain cliffs help to fulfill her dreams of romantic love—an experience through which she attains not only the depth and understanding of her parents but her own maturity.

What threatens to be a dismal summer for Judy becomes a time of discovery of herself, of music and of America.

A Wonderful World Book

Teenage

About the Author

Sophie Ruskay enjoys a family life very much like the one she creates in Discovery at Aspen. Having raised a family of five children, she has now added twelve grandchildren, many of them teenagers who consider her their friend and compassionate advisor. She is the author of Horsecars and Cobblestones, a warmly received novel of immigrant life in New York at the turn of the century. The same understanding which she showed in that work, she now applies to the story of a young teenager whose problems and frustrations she depicts with deep sympathy.

Mrs. Ruskay writes of the world around her with an eager eye and a responsive spirit. The grandeur of Aspen, its natural beauties, its cultural life as well as its historical heritage—all are graphically described. It is in this setting that we see the young generation of today striving for self-realization, often in rebellion against their parents during this trying period of adolescence.

Mrs. Ruskay has been a beloved figure in her community for many years, participating in the cultural, philanthropic and civic activities as a creative and energetic leader. She has written and directed a large number of plays which have been notable for their humor and social awareness. Perhaps the most significant demonstration of Mrs. Ruskay’s life-long devotion to literature and drama is seen in her formation and leadership of a literary class in the Women’s House of Detention in New York City.

Also by Sophie Ruskay:
Horsecars and Cobblestones
Illustrated by Cecil B. Ruskay

PRINTED IN U.S.A.

Other Wonderful World Books

The rich and moving story of a young Iranian boy who leaves his small farm village to search for his father, with help of an Arab girl, in the crowded squares, the apartment houses and slums, and even the great underground bazaar of Tehran.

Nate rides his thoroughbred filly Liberty Maid on a race to save his family’s farm from Joseph Brant’s Indians in this fine historical novel set in upper New York State during the Revolutionary War.

The glowing, miraculous legends grown around Rabbi Israel Baal Shem-Tob, the father of Hassidism, lovingly collected and especially adapted for young readers.

A rousing mystery-adventure story in which four Tennessee boys are plunged by a hurricane into the Florida Everglades, are “rescued” by modern pirates and stranded in the Ten Thousand Islands, and discover pirate gold.

New York: A. S. BARNES and COMPANY, INC.
London: THOMAS YOSELOFF, LTD.