On October 29,1928, in the quaint Chicago suburb of Lake Bluff, 30-year-old Elfrieda Knaak was found naked, with burns over more than half of her body, and propped up next to a furnace in the basement of the Village Hall. The events that took place in the following two weeks turned the idyllic village of Lake Bluff upside down as local and county law enforcement officials scrambled to determine what took place and who was responsible.  Ninety years later, the questions are still unanswered-- How did she get there? By what means was she so badly burned? Who could have perpetrated such a heinous crime? This baffling story became a nation-wide media sensation, thrusting the small town of Lake Bluff and its beloved Village Hall onto the front pages of newspapers from New York to Los Angeles. The Furnace Girl is Kraig Moreland's theory of what really happened to Elfrieda Knaak, as told to and beautifully written by Toby Jones, It is a stranger-than-fiction story, told through the eyes of Griff Morgan, a young orphan boy, whose harrowing journey makes him an accidental witness to what still remains one of the most puzzling, unsolved crimes of the early 1900s.   In this fictionalized account of the mystery, Griff and his young sister land at the Lake Bluff Orphanage, where they must learn to navigate their new surroundings and face their fears. The 12-year-old Griff stumbles upon unlawful activity throughout the town, from Elfrieda’s illicit relationship with a married man, (and prime suspect) to characters so dark that he feels his safety slipping away with every day.  The Furnace Girl appeals to crime buffs and those looking for a powerful coming-of-age story that pulls on even the toughest of heartstrings.

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