Blood secret

Blood Secret is a novel for young readers by the American writer Kathryn Lasky, published in 2004.

Jerry's silence is how the novel handles grief: she does not talk about her mother, and the household she has been sent to is full of things that are not discussed either. What the trunk gives her is a set of experiences rather than documents, so she lives through the danger her ancestors were in when being known as a Jew could be fatal, and later through the arrival of those traditions in the Americas. Lasky weaves together Catholic, Jewish, Aztec and Navajo strands, and the book is as much about a girl learning the meaning of her own full name as about the history she travels into. It was written for readers of about twelve and older, and the period it covers is one that fiction for that age rarely touches.

It is one of a number of historical novels by the author, and it came after a long career that had already included a Newbery Honor.