Update on 7/30/26 - Benefield's book debuted at No. 14 on the New York Times Best Sellers list for "Hardcover Nonfiction."
She also appeared on the popular Armchair Expert podcast, which you can listen to here.
--Original Post Below--
Eva Benefield has spent the last few years turning a Charleston warehouse and a TikTok account into Ghost Cowboy, a Lowcountry apparel brand known for its shark's-teeth-and-sand-dollar designs and its loyal following. Now she's adding another title to her list: author. Her debut memoir, Ghost Girl: Surviving the Black Swan Murder, is available now from booksellers everywhere.
When Eva was just fifteen years old, her mother died of a sudden heart attack. Her father remarried Ashley Byers, a twenty-four-year-old bikini model. Five years later, Byers shot and killed her father. The 2020 trial garnered national publicity and was coined the "Black Swan Murder." Once a normal teenager in Charleston, Eva found herself surrounded by grief, isolation, and a true crime media frenzy she never asked for.
Despite such tragic circumstances, Eva responded by shaping her own narrative. On her TikTok, which now has over 700,000 followers, she documents her new life and talks openly about the aftermath of the murder and trial. Like her TikTok account, her memoir "Ghost Girl" mixes grace and dark humor to recount her personal and emotional development through extraordinary circumstances.
On top of that, Eva has built a thriving local apparel brand called Ghost Cowboy. She started the Lowcountry clothing line in 2021 by hand-drawing shirt designs in her warehouse every single day for months, recording the process and uploading it to TikTok. Since then, the brand has garnered significant social media attention and grown to encompass t-shirts, hats, crewnecks, tank tops, and customizable products, most featuring something related to Charleston and the beach, from sharks to mermaids to sand castles.
Through her apparel brand, memoir, and social media activity, Eva has transformed an experience filled with grief and unwanted attention into one centered around resilience, creativity, and self-expression.
Order "Ghost Girl: Surviving the Black Swan Murder" on hardcover here: https://www.simonandschuster.