THE GIRL IN BARREL

When floodwater tears through the forgotten edges of Mercy Bend, Mississippi, it uncovers something the town buried twenty seven years ago. Behind an abandoned tenant house, county workers discover a rusted blue barrel hidden in the mud. Inside are the remains of a young girl the town once wrote off as a runaway. To Sheriff Eli Varnell, the discovery feels like more than an old murder. It feels like a message that was never meant to be found. For Naomi Vale, the barrel brings back the daughter no one believed she lost. Years ago, Naomi begged the sheriff's office, the church, and the powerful Wren family to listen when her thirteen year old daughter, Annie Grace Vale, vanished after a church youth event. Instead, Mercy Bend called Annie troubled, called Naomi unstable, and buried the truth beneath charity work, missing records, old money, and polite lies. Now Eli and Deputy Mara Bell begin pulling at the threads, and every answer leads deeper into the town's most respected places. A church camp. A wealthy mansion. A neglected cemetery. A hidden room beneath generations of power. What they uncover is bigger than one murder and darker than one family's secret. Mercy Bend was built on silence. Naomi Vale is done being silent. As the town splits between justice and fear, the truth rises from the floodwater with a dead girl's name attached to it. Annie did not run. Annie left proof. And the people who buried her are about to learn that some secrets do not stay buried forever. The Girl in the Barrel is a haunting standalone Southern thriller about power, corruption, grief, and a mother's unbreakable fight to bring her daughter home.

Pagina's: 475, Paperback, Independently published