The Mermaid of Crater Lake - Paperback

by Burton J. J. (Author)

Raina has always felt that something was waiting for her beneath the water. She never imagined it would pull her from a bridge.

When nineteen-year-old Raina awakens in a hospital, her neck bandaged and her arms secured to the bed, she has no memory of how she got there. The last thing she remembers is riding her bike across the Astoria-Megler Bridge with her best friend, Avery. Witnesses say she climbed onto the railing as if in a trance and plunged two hundred feet into the Columbia River.

Everyone believes she tried to end her life. They are wrong.

Raina's impossible survival forces her parents to reveal a secret they have hidden since her birth: she is descended from a mermaid.

Almost a century earlier, her grandmother Iara was stolen from the waters off Chile by Riley, a deaf sailor driven by grief and revenge. Immune to Iara's enchanting voice, he carried her thousands of miles from home and imprisoned her in a cave on Wizard Island, deep within Oregon's Crater Lake.

Trapped far from the ocean and forced to survive on unfamiliar legs, Iara found comfort in the animals and spirits drawn to her extraordinary gifts. Her unlikely allies, including her captor's clever dog and a mysterious pack of wolves, offered the one thing Riley could never extinguish: hope.

Now Iara's hidden past is awakening inside Raina. Guided by an old journal and a strangely inscribed necklace found in her parents' attic, Raina begins unraveling the story of the grandmother she barely knew. As the water calls to her, her body changes and abilities she cannot explain rise to the surface. Despite her parents' warnings, she can no longer run from the truth of who she is.

Her search takes her and Avery from the misty Pacific Northwest to Chile's legendary Chiloé Archipelago, where ancient stories endure and people still honor the Pincoya, a mermaid believed to protect their shores. With the help of a young fisherman and his family, Raina ventures into the waters where her grandmother was born, hoping to discover whether the legends are real and whether she belongs among them.

But some secrets have remained hidden for a reason.

Blending the dramatic landscapes of Crater Lake, the Columbia River, and coastal Chile with mermaid mythology, romance, adventure, and self-discovery, The Mermaid of Crater Lake is an enchanting story about ancestry, courage, belonging, and the invisible bonds connecting humans, animals, and the natural world.

Sometimes discovering who you truly are means following the call that no one else can hear.