What the Dragger Brought Up

A body pulled from the sea. A mother's desperate hope. And a secret someone has kept buried for years.

When a fishing dragger hauls human remains from the waters off Hagstone Island, seventy-three-year-old lighthouse keeper Janie Pettengill fears the moment she has dreaded for two and a half years has finally arrived.

The remains are discovered near Little Gore, where her daughter Carrie's empty skiff washed ashore after she mysteriously vanished.

The whole island believes the sea has finally given Carrie back.

And despite herself, Janie does too.

But the truth is devastating. The remains belong to a stranger-a mainland man who disappeared around the same time as Carrie, his body deliberately weighted with a concrete block.

Someone on Hagstone Island knows how he ended up there. And Janie is determined to find out why.

After fifty-four years tending Hagstone Head Light, Janie knows these waters better than anyone. She even remembers when the Coast Guard poured the concrete blocks used offshore-and something about this particular block troubles her.

With help from her loyal Wednesday Watch, Janie begins investigating a murder that may hold the first real clue to her daughter's disappearance.

But the investigation comes at a cost.

Her grandson Toby is spending more time on the mainland, her son is struggling with renewed grief, and Janie's own health is beginning to betray her. Meanwhile, the island's close-knit community seems strangely reluctant to uncover the truth.

As autumn settles over Hagstone, old loyalties are tested, buried secrets surface, and Janie must confront a terrible possibility.

What if someone on the island has known what happened to Carrie all along?

What the Dragger Brought Up is the sixth book in The Hagstone Light Mysteries, an atmospheric Maine coastal cozy mystery featuring a wonderfully determined older sleuth, a close-knit island community, long-buried secrets, and a murder that strikes painfully close to home.

A clean, standalone cozy mystery with no graphic violence or profanity, a satisfying, fairly clued solution, and plenty of autumn atmosphere, lighthouse charm, island traditions, and New England coastal intrigue.

The sea has surrendered one secret. But Janie Pettengill is still waiting for the truth about her daughter.