Before She Drowned

The call came at 2:14 in the morning.

The name on the screen was MOTHER.

But Eleanor Merritt was already dead.

When true-crime podcaster Sloane Merritt returns to Cedarbell County, Georgia, after her mother drowns in the backyard pool, everyone tells her the same thing: it was an accident.

Sloane knows better than to trust a story just because everyone tells it the same way.

Eleanor had been keeping appointments. Following routines. Gathering documents. Leaving clues. And maintaining a standing Tuesday dinner with the woman who knew her better than anyone.

The deeper Sloane digs, the more unsettling the truth becomes.

Her mother wasn't preparing to die. She was preparing to be believed after she did.

The trail reaches back to Sloane's father's long-ago death, through the old families who built Cedarbell, and into secrets powerful people have spent decades keeping beneath the surface.

Sloane came home for a funeral.

She intends to leave with the truth-if it doesn't pull her under first.

But Cedarbell is only one end of the trail.

From Cedarbell, Georgia, to Palm Beach, the bodies stack up.

True-crime podcaster Sloane Merritt stacks up the bodies.
Financial investigator Zara Vogel stacks up the ledgers.

Two women. Two trails.

One conspiracy.

BEFORE SHE DROWNED
The Magnolia Series - Book One

A Southern Gothic mystery thriller of murder, family secrets, old money, buried history, and the dangerous stories respectable people tell to keep their hands clean.