MERGO

When a family member falls deathly ill, 14-year?old Piper turns to her classmate Tad for comfort. Tad, an amateur botanist, tells her there's a Seminole legend of a cure- ?all flower found only in an unexplored section of Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp. Desperate for any glimmer of hope, Piper convinces Tad to accompany her on a hunt for the flower.

What awaits them in the country’s largest black water swamp is an entity the Creek Indians, now long gone, spoke of in hushed, fearful tones. The Seminole believed that the swamp's first settlers, the mystical Tasketcha tribe, still existed as evil spirits, forever tethered to their burial mounds found in the dark heart of the waterlogged forest.

If Piper has any chance of saving her loved one, she’ll have to do the impossible—find the miracle flower, face her past, and overcome an ancient evil known only as Mergo.

Robert Lettrick has worked for Marvel Comics, Marvel Films and Harris Publications. He has an MA in sequential storytelling from Savannah College of Art and Design, had the great fortune to learn directly from renowned artists such as Mike Mignola (Hellboy), Mark Schultz (Cadillac’s and Dinosaurs) and the late Mike Wieringo (Tellos). His debut middle?grade novel, FRENZY, also with Disney, publishes spring 2014.