What Ava Knows: A Salty Secret

In the coastal town of Salty Waves, twelve-year-old Ava Mercer knows her mother did not simply disappear. When Allie Mercer vanishes, adults quickly reach for the easiest explanation: stress, grief, and a mother overwhelmed by the past. But Ava notices what they hope she will miss: missing files, strange timing, hidden notes, old photographs, and powerful people who seem too eager to control the story.As Ava follows the clues her mother left behind, she uncovers a deeper mystery tied to her father Brett Mercer, a former hometown baseball hero whose death seven years earlier was publicly labeled a heroin overdose. But Allie, a nurse, never believed the story. Now Ava must trace the truth through the Shallow Crab's trophy case, Dockside Storage, hospital records, a hidden flash drive, and a town full of people who owe too much to tell the truth.At its heart, A Salty Secret is a dark coastal mystery about family, grief, loyalty, corruption, and one girl's refusal to let adults decide what she is allowed to know.