Bigfoot of Wayah Bold

THE BIGFOOT OF WAYAH BALD Book One of The Smoky Mountain Bigfoot Files A Smoky Mountain mystery where the creek remembers-and Bigfoot might be watching. When twelve‑year‑old Mara Boone hikes down to Foss Ledbetter's dock at dawn, she expects the same quiet magic she's known her whole life: mist pooling low in the hollow, the Nantahala whispering over stone, and Foss reading the river like scripture. Instead she finds chemical‑tainted water, Foss's boat smashed against the rocks, and Foss himself unconscious on the bank. The sheriff calls it a "boating accident." Mara knows better. The dock line wasn't frayed. It was cut-clean, straight, deliberate. And then there's the footprint. Huge. Deep. Human‑shaped. Gone before anyone else sees it. Something stood on that bank with Foss. Something that left no trail behind. Something that felt too big for the morning mist to hide. A mystery rooted in the Smokies, where the land keeps its own secrets. Mara gathers her three closest friends-Huck Mathers, Ada Whitewater, and newcomer Mikey Cook-and together they start pulling at threads the adults refuse to touch. Upstream, the creek mud has cracked like drought. Minnows lie belly‑up. A truck with a damaged tread has been backing down to the water at night. And along the river road, For Sale signs are appearing one by one, like someone is quietly buying up the mountainside. Every clue points toward the controversial Ridge View development, a project carving into the forest with a hunger that feels older than zoning laws. But the strangest discovery belongs to Mara alone. Returning to the ruined dock, she finds a stone balanced upright on the cleat where the rope was cut-warm to the touch, impossibly steady, and left without a single footprint in the surrounding mud. It feels…