Altar of Ashes

Two deer hunters happen upon their worst nightmare: a young girl cruelly burned to death in a forest to the accompaniment of a cheering crowd. And with this, the world changed. The subsequent trial consumes a small town in Indiana, enthralls a ravenous press and transfixes the wider nation. The principals involved are existentially torn; a prosecutor by his irresistible outrage, overweening professional ambition, and a failing marriage; his beautiful second chair by her conflicted Asian identity in this disarmingly rural setting; and a colossal African-American defense consul who vacillates between his seasoned notion of social justice, and the hideous mission he had been enlisted to perform. Altar of Ashes is a courtroom stemwinder, which grabs the reader by the throat, as its characters grapple for their own boundaries of 'right and wrong' in an increasingly sinister, value-neutral multicultural landscape. The philosophic definition of American society is shredded in the process. And from the first page to the last, as prospects shape shift with events, the reader will guess in vain at the unknowable outcome. The novel is unique in its boldness. Its very context is too provocative, too volatile.