Foundational Texts: Puzzle Pieces

My well-worn copy of The Westing Game. Foundational Texts is a monthly essay series that looks at some of the culture that shaped me and how it still resonates today. Read all the installments: January: Jenny Holzer | February: The Goonies | March: The Channel 5 News Team | April: The Cave of Time | May: The Westing Game "The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east." And so begins The Westing Game, a children's mystery written in 1978 by Ellen Raskin, one of only four novels she ever wrote. It is a perfect book—or at least, for me as a kid, it was as close as it ever got. The Westing Game tells the story of a series of neighbors, all invited to move into the aforementioned Sunset Towers, built on the shore of Lake Michigan. They are strangers to each other at first, but quickly learn that they are all heirs to the fortune of paper mill magnate Samuel Westing, and whoever solves the puzzle laid out in his will inherits his millions. Each heir…