The Ragtime Kid (Ragtime Mystery Trilogy)

Brun Campbell, a 15-year-old piano fool, gets to play Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" one 1898 afternoon in Oklahoma City. It's destiny calling. Though he tries for ragtime lessons, he's told no--"Ragtime is colored music" So Brun runs away from the family home in El Reno, Oklahoma, to Sedalia, Missouri, to persuade Joplin to take him on as a pupil. What Brun doesn't expect is to trip over the body of a young woman--he thinks at first she's a log and thoughtlessly picks up a couple of items before he rushes away.