Daughters of the Salt Rebellion
A lyrical fantasy of forbidden names, ancestral memory, and the fire that sings beneath silence.

In an empire where girls are stripped of their names at birth and taught to survive by staying silent, Maelani knows only obedience—until the day she hears the sea whisper a name not given by the Crown. Her own.

Raised in a coastal village of salt harvesters and fear, Maelani's life changes when she discovers a forbidden chant—an ancient song passed down by the Sea Mothers, women who once shaped the world with their voices. To speak is treason. To remember is a crime. But when her voice rises against the Empire's silence, Maelani becomes more than a girl. She becomes a myth reborn.

As she journeys across the empire—through drowned temples, whispering dunes, and flame-lit caves—Maelani gathers other daughters who remember fragments of what was stolen: sacred names, salt songs, bone scripts, and womb-carried prophecy. Together, they awaken a rebellion not of swords or crowns, but of song and memory—an uprising written in ash, blood, and the unkillable truth of the divine feminine.

But the Empire of Erasure does not fall quietly. And to sing the First Name—the one that could shatter the kingdom's spell of silence—Maelani must descend into the capital's darkest vault, where the bones of her ancestors wait to be remembered.

Daughters of the Salt Rebellion is a visionary young adult novel that blends myth, mysticism, and feminist fantasy in the spirit of The Grace Year, She Who Became the Sun, and The Priory of the Orange Tree. It is a story about the sacredness of voice, the cost of forgetting, and the fire waiting in every silenced girl.

If you've ever felt your voice burning behind your ribs, this is the song you've been waiting for.