Laura Matthias Bendoly

Laerka Laura Matthias Bendoly

Laerka is Southern Gothic adventure in which a teen rescue party takes on a Russian crime ring that has been selling girls to night clubs in Savannah, Georgia. One particular victim, Laerka, is a Danish girl who transforms into a mermaid when in water. The crime boss who masterminds the trafficking morphs into a "vodyanoy" dragon when he hunts girls for the skin trade. Sixteen-year-old Stella Delaney, a Savannah local, finds Vodyanoy's first victim floating face down in the marsh. Can she save Learka from this fate or is the foreign beauty a criminal, herself? She and the traffickers share the same prison tattoo. Who in this forbidding landscape can be trusted?