The Sea Keeper's Daughters

 The Sea Keeper's Daughter, written by Lisa Wingate, is her third book set in North Carolina. I didn't know I was reading the third book in a trilogy until after I finished. The main character is Whitney Monroe, a restaurant owner in northern Michigan. She learns that her step-father is in the hospital in North Carolina so she drives there to help. She doesn't get along with her step-father very well. She didn't know that the building he lives in belongs to her. He lives on the third floor. The house was once a hotel owned by her grandmother. Several shops are on the first floor. The shop owners are concerned that she is going to sell the building to a developer who wants to tear it down and build a high-rise. Whitney needs to raise some cash pronto. Another restaurant owner is foiling her plans to open a second restaurant. He has the county licensors in his pocket. Leaving her cousin to hold down the fort in Michigan she tries to make sense of the situation at her grandmother's house. She finds some old jewelry, a ruby locket, an old scrimshaw necklace, and some papers written by her grandmother's sister. Whitney did not know her grandmother had a sister. The sister, Alice, worked for the WPA during the depression. She wrote down stories of the people living in Appalachia for the government. Whitney brings the jewelry and the letters to a local museum and gets enough cash to save her restaurant. The museum is thrilled to have the letters and the artifacts. Whitney is a likeable character and I enjoyed reading her story.