Apotheosis

Apotheosis begins with the illegal practice of a ritual in the backwoods of Indiana. Those responsible assert their cultural and religious rights when arrested for performing the ceremony in which a very young widow-merely a child-throws herself on a funeral pyre. Apotheosis is set in the small rural village of Principia, Indiana. Two teenage deer hunters happen upon a bizarre ceremony deep in a local forest early one November morning. An investigation uncovers the debris of a funeral pyre in which the corpse of a ten-year old girl is discovered, atop the remains of another body. The local prosecutor soon finds himself embroiled in a spectacular case, swirling around issues of religious toleration, cultural bigotry, and multicultural diversity, which sweep the small community into a vortex of national publicity and communal conflict. Bruce Westrate teaches history at a prep school in Dallas, Texas, but was born and raised in rural southwest lower Michigan. He holds three degrees in History from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and is the author of the very well-received The Arab Bureau (Penn State Press, 1992), which is still in print. In addition to authoring book reviews and a column for the National Review, Westrate contributed a chapter on the subject at the center of this novel to Rediscovering the British Empire (Krieger, 2002), titled Acknowledged Truths: Lord Bentinck and the Abolition of Sati. Westrate lives in Dallas with Sally, his wife of more than four decades.