Shannon, 1940. Daphne finds a tin trunk, a partial map, a pressed orange flower — and a note from her missing father: Start where the horses ran. The trail begins.
Shannon, 1940. Fourteen-year-old Daphne discovers a locked tin trunk belonging to her missing father — ST Hughes, a Welsh racehorse breeder who vanished in the Belgian Congo. Inside: a partial map, a pressed orange flower, and a note in his handwriting. Start where the horses ran.
What follows is the beginning of a trail that will span three continents, two hundred years of botanical history, and four generations of a real family still searching for answers.
It is the first clue ST Hughes ever left for his daughter, and Daphne has no idea yet how many more are hidden across two countries and three decades. Tucked inside the tin trunk alongside the map and the flower is a name she has never heard before, and a date that doesn't match anything in the family's story.
What follows is Daphne's first journey along her father's trail — into the stud farms and racetracks of the Orange Free State, where ST bred the horses that gave the book its title, and into the strange, fragrant world of Black Forest Tea, the herbal remedy ST created and that the family still makes today. Along the way Daphne meets the people who knew her father best, and begins to realise that the quiet Welsh immigrant she thought she knew was hiding far more than anyone in the family ever suspected.
Every chapter ends with a Clue Keeper, gathering everything Daphne — and the reader — has discovered so far, and a What Would YOU Do? question that turns this clue-driven adventure into a real conversation around the table or at bedtime. By the final page, Daphne has her first real answer — and her first real reason to believe her father might still be findable.
The story is set in 1940s South Africa, at Shannon — the Hughes family farm — and ranges across the Orange Free State's horse country, with roots reaching back to Wales in the 1920s and forward to the Belgian Congo, where ST was last seen. Real places, real dates, and a real unanswered question anchor every page.
Start Where The Horses Ran is written as a family read-aloud adventure book — paced so that the adult is never ahead of the child, with short chapters suited to bedtime, long car journeys, or a homeschool unit on Welsh immigration and South African history. Most families begin around age 8, though the real history and unresolved family mystery at its core mean it reads just as well as a solo adult read. If your family has enjoyed the clue-trail format of The 39 Clues and you're looking for a family mystery book based on a true story — set somewhere genuinely different, spanning South Africa, Wales and the Belgian Congo — this is where the trail begins.
The Hughes Chronicles is based on a true family story. ST Hughes was real. Daphne was real. The trail is real. The locations are rooted in real history. Where the story needed wings to fly — it was given them. The mystery at its heart has never been solved.
Read the true story behind this book →
The trail continues — leads directly into Book 2 — The Man With Two Watches →
A grandfather on the West Coast of South Africa. A grandchild in London. Both looking at the same page on a video call, arguing about where ST went and why he left the clues he did.
One purchase. One flipbook. One shared screen. The trail runs between generations — exactly the way ST intended it to.
More on reading together across the miles →
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