Something About the Timing of "Treasure"

Anthony’s adventures begin.

Here are some of the opening notes from the archives during our The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn (1978) reading project. Treasure was the seventh book written by John Bellairs and is the first book in the Anthony Monday series. It was published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1978.

Treasure marked a change in direction for Bellairs as he moved away from characters and settings set in a redress of his hometown of Marshall, Michigan. Anthony was slightly older and a more mature character than Lewis Barnavelt, and the elderly librarian Myra Eells had no special secrets or talents like Mrs. Zimmermann. Aside from Eells's profound clumsiness. Their adventures took place in the rural Minnesota community of Hoosac, terrain familiar to Bellairs from his two-year stint of living and teaching in Winona from 1963-65. The book was also a rare departure in that the author used no supernatural elements, giving readers an entirely unexpected story than what they had come to expect after chilling thrill-rides like The Face in the Frost (1969) and The House with a Clock in its Walls (1973).

When the book begins, Anthony lies awake on a "windy night in March" listening to his parents discuss the family’s financial problems.

This book also stands out from the three proceeding Barnavelt books because Bellairs does not immediately identify the year the story takes place. Readers are free to assume, based on a familiarity of his other writing, this adventure too is set in the ubiquitous "mid-1950s" and nothing in the text specifically says otherwise. But because of this, Anthony’s story seems as plausible as happening in the 1950s as it could be in the 1970s when the book was published.

Would you agree?  At least we know it's March.