The Sounding Under Mercy Gale
Sweet
When structural engineer Mara Barstow returns to Casco Bay, she expects to condemn Mercy Gale Wharf and leave her estranged father to the consequences of another Barstow failure. The wharf has stood since 1899, built from the timbers of a wrecked schooner and added to by every generation that came after: a pier, a bait shed, a debt, a lie.
But beneath the oldest pilings, Mara finds human remains.
The discovery turns a failing family property into a crime scene, a legal battlefield, and the one place Mara cannot walk away from. Her father, Alden, is drowning in private debt to Cal Pike, a bait dealer eager to buy the waterfront for himself. The town remembers more than it admits. And Finn Deveraux, the lobsterman helping Mara keep the wharf from collapsing, may belong to the branch of the Barstow family erased after a deadly strike over trap prices nearly a century ago.
As storms, creditors, old ledgers, and buried loyalties close in, Mara must decide what can be saved: the wharf, the truth, her father's ruined name, or the dangerous trust growing between her and Finn.
Some inheritances are land. Some are debt. At Mercy Gale Wharf, the oldest one is waiting under the tide.
