A respected attorney and the daughter of a prominent Southern Senator, Avery is a dutiful daddy’s girl. She worries over her father’s ailing health as he battles cancer. She is engaged to a fellow attorney, Elliot, who is also from a powerful and well-connected Southern family. Having grown up in a political family, she is used to the public eye being upon her. She believes in the importance of appearances and the concealment of damaging secrets, at least in the beginning of the novel. Once she locks onto her grandmother’s story, that superficiality begins to melt away. Seeing the intensity and passion in May Crandall’s eyes when she first meets her and reading the letters her grandmother penned long ago, inquiring in impassioned tones to find a missing child, Avery realizes she needs to peer below the surface, even at the peril of her family’s reputation or her affluent and stable life. Meeting Trent rocks her life further off its charted path, but seeing the love between sisters makes her crave true love, not convenient partnership. She is a dynamic character who moves from safe, staid choices that bolster appearances to a person who gives into passion and craves the truth, no matter how painstaking the quest for it may be.