The Schoolhouse on Sweetwater Road
A Historical Thriller

About this book:

When historic preservation architect Harper Cross arrives at the abandoned Sweetwater Schoolhouse to document a Rosenwald school—one of thousands built for Black children in the segregated South—he expects rotting timber and faded blueprints. Instead, he finds a false wall, a surveyor's ledger altered with red ink, and a human rib bone wrapped in oilcloth. The building isn't just decaying; it's been hiding a ninety-year-old crime.

In 1927, schoolmaster Thomas Clear vanished after challenging a land grab by the powerful Pettigrew family. The county surveyor rewrote the plats, the sheriff looked away, and a Rosenwald school—paid for in nickels and dimes by a community that had nothing—became a vault for the evidence. Now Marcus Finch, the last living witness, has waited decades for someone to find what his father buried beneath the classroom floor.

But the Pettigrews still own the courthouse, the sheriff's office, and two hundred acres slated for a multi-million-dollar industrial park. As a dark green pickup shadows Harper's every move, he realizes the ledger in his truck isn't just a historical artifact—it's a deed to land worth killing for. With the county commission voting in days and the truth scattered across fractured documents, Harper must decode a conspiracy written in survey chains and buried foundations before the past is paved over forever.