Character Profile
Maya Okonkwo
Age 24. A journalist and writer. Maya came home to Merhaven for the Wanderlight's 250th anniversary with her three-year-old daughter, Iris, and found a mystery waiting in the stones. She led the hunt for Ebenezer Crowther's hidden capsule, read the names of the lost aloud to the village, and wrote the book that told the whole story. Ten years after organising the campaign to save the lighthouse at fourteen, she's still the one who notices — and the one who writes it down.
Merhaven village The Salt Pot café The Wanderlight
Favourite Things
Her notebook
The same leather-bound notebook she's kept since she was eight — now full of two decades of observations, campaigns, hunts, and the book she wrote about the Wanderlight.
Her daughter, Iris
Three years old, and already knows the lighthouse is special. Maya walks her to the memorial the way Grandpa Crowther once walked her.
The keeper's cottage
Where she wrote 'The Wanderlight' — the book that told the whole story, from the shipwreck to the 250th anniversary.
The cliff path
The winding track up to the lighthouse. She walks it every time she comes home — it's still where she thinks best.
Skills
Noticing things
Maya spotted the empty niche in the lighthouse foundation — the first clue that the 250th capsule had been hidden, not stolen.
Telling the story
She wrote the book that told the whole story of the Wanderlight — the shipwreck, the campaign, the cipher, the names.
Bringing people together
She led the hunt for the capsule the way she led the campaign at fourteen — without bossing, and the village followed.
Keeping the light
She sees the lighthouse as a chain — Ebenezer to Grandpa to the friends to Iris — and she's making sure the chain doesn't break.
"The light is the people. It always was."
— Maya