The Making of a Beauty

A contemporary Christian retelling of The Ugly Duckling.

Calysta Daniels was born from her father’s greatest mistake. To atone for this, she lives in her half-sisters’ shadow and carves her pain into her own skin. When her father’s ships sink, their family loses it all, so they move to the house of a dead mother she was never allowed to know.

In Lumaire Valley, her great-aunt threatens them with the past, unraveling the forgotten reality that Calysta’s mother was not a scandal, but a source of faith, of love, of something beautiful. Drawn by her mother’s legacy, Calysta faces who she’s always been: never a mistake. Not just a duckling. A black swan — strange, rare, and real.

The Making of a Beauty is a raw, faith-fueled, coming-of-age novel that shows a God who doesn’t always erase our scars. He rewrites them.