Book excerpt: Erika is transgender. She's known since she was young; being a woman just fit better. She loved to wear her mother's dresses and tight corsets, but that was before the disease took her mother away. Erika's father doesn't see a daughter, he sees a confused son that needs a new start in a new city across the ocean. Erika has no place to go, so with the last of her mother's dresses she packs for months on a sailing ship. Halfway across the ocean, Erika's life is forever altered. She sneaks on deck in her mother's dress in the dead of night and a superstitious deckhand throws her overboard, dress and all. But drowning at sea isn't how Erika plans to die. She cuts a deal with a sea witch for more than her life--for the first time, she is transformed into the woman she's always known was inside. Her dress becomes a mermaid tail and all it took was her voice. She should have known living her authentic life wouldn't be so easy, though. The witch wants more than Erika's voice, she's on the hunt for the undersea throne, the seat of power. Ariel, the last daughter of the king must marry in three days or the first place Erika has ever called home will be destroyed. The magic of true love is the only thing that can save them now.