"...Arriving in the strange new city is, for Elisabet, like going to another country - the Louisiana Purchase has only just occurred recently, so the residents are still very much French or Spanish at heart. On top of this, she finds out that she is expected to work in her aunt and uncle's bakery as a shop assistant; this is very different from living in Boston with her father, where she went to school and had servants to wait on her. When she learns news of the ship that took her father prisoner, however, and is determined to rescue him from the British, she soon learns the value of friendship despite social class boundaries. ..."

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http://herebebookwyrms.blogspot.com/2011/11/smugglers-treasure.html ( )

My all time favorite of American Girl History Mysteries!

This is one of the American Girl History Mysteries. It's the tale of Elisabet Holder, an eleven-year-old Boston girl whose father has been impressed by the British navy in 1814. Her mother is dead and her guardian decides to send her off to live with and aunt and uncle in New Orleans. When she arrives there, she learns that her uncle has died while she was en route and that he has left behind a mystery--a map of the surrounding bayous that would be worth a pretty price to the local government, smugglers, and perhaps the British army. The mystery unravels while Elisabet struggles to make the transition from the daughter of an upper class Boston merchant to a working class, orphaned shop girl. While I was delighted to read a story that wasn't set on the Eastern Seaboard for a change, the story itself is rather pedestrian. Neither the characters nor the story drew me in, and the descriptions of the setting seemed rather lackluster. Still, it serves as waiting room material.
--J. ( )