The Bigfoot Mystery
The Adventure Begins

By Robert Leiterman/Writers Club Press 264 pages

Most books written about bigfoot are nonfiction and oriented towards adults. There are not many books on the market that cater to children and young adults in the netherworld of dark mysterious nights and the elusive hairy creatures that inhabit them. Robert Leiterman has tackled two tasks in the writing of this first book in his fictional bigfoot trilogy, The Bigfoot Mystery, The Adventure Begins. The first task taken on is writing an interesting fictional story about bigfoot, the second is taking on the alleged facts about the creature and implanting them in the story so the young reader not only has an interesting story but that the reader also gets a quick lesson on all things bigfoot.

Leiterman is a good yarn spinner and builds his story around two young brothers who have a chance encounter with a bigfoot on a deserted hiking trail in Northern California while on a family outing. This chance encounter quickly pulls the family into the wacky eccentric world of bigfoot that many of us are so well acquainted with. The book is broken into eleven chapters but really splits into five different sections. The first two chapters deal with the boys bigfoot encounter, the chaos that follows and the families’ collective effort to deal with the experience.

The next section, chapters three and four of the book includes a return to the scene of the incident and also a visit to the local library for some research. Leiterman uses this part of the book to introduce the reader to bigfoot history and the basics of the creature itself. We are also introduced to the librarian who has an interest in bigfoot because of an encounter his uncle once had. The librarian serves as a bridge to the next part of the book as he befriends the family as he too joins their bigfoot entourage.

Chapters five and six put the family in motion as they take a trip with the librarian to visit his friend who has a bigfoot museum in the rugged reaches of Northern California. The family chats with the librarian along the way and we are taken on a tour of the museum - complete with an in depth history lesson on bigfoot. At the end of the tour, the museum owner asks the family and librarian to join him one weekend at his top secret bigfoot research area.