The Hartwell Saga

Hartwell, New Jersey, was never meant to give up its secrets.

When archaeologist Nora Hale returns to her hometown to oversee the redevelopment of the long-abandoned Blackwater Bootworks, she expects routine work: soil surveys, structural remnants, and fragments of the past neatly cataloged and explained.

What she finds instead is something buried.

Beneath the collapsed factory floor lies evidence that was never recorded—and was never meant to be found.

As Nora begins to uncover the truth, the story shifts back to 1873, inside the Merritt factory, where boys labor under brutal conditions and silence is a means of survival. Harlan Merritt is determined to protect the factory he built, even as suspicion gathers around him. His wife, Eliza, sees far more than she says. And within those walls moves Gideon Pike, a man who collects secrets and leaves ruin in his wake.

Some stories were erased.

Some were buried.

And some are still waiting.

The Bones of Blackwater is a haunting dual-timeline historical mystery about what history chooses to remember, what families choose to hide, and what the earth refuses to forget.