In the shrouded village of Morrey, grief has a voice-and it whispers through the trees.
When Eleanor Clarke loses her six-year-old son in a tragic accident, her world collapses into silence. But a letter from her estranged grandmother-cryptic and scented with old lavender-calls her back to Morrey, a place where the air tastes of forgotten ash and secrets don't stay buried. The letter promises something impossible: "If you ever lose him, come home. I'll tell you what they did for me."
The Tithe of Ashes is a haunting tale of grief, motherhood, and the dangerous hunger to undo the past. In this modern gothic novel, Eleanor learns that in Morrey, death is not always the end-and the cost of return is never what it seems. Through chilling rituals, ancestral debts, and doors best left unopened, she's forced to confront the deepest corners of loss and the monsters grief can summon in its likeness.
But not everything that returns from the grave is what it claims to be.
As shadows deepen and the fog thickens around the house of her childhood, Eleanor must decide what she is willing to sacrifice for one more chance to hold her son-or what she must destroy to keep his memory from becoming something far more dangerous.
Atmospheric, lyrical, and psychologically relentless, The Tithe of Ashes is perfect for readers of Pet Sematary, The Silent Companions, and The Only Good Indians. It is not a story of resurrection-it is a story of reckoning.
If you've ever whispered the name of a lost loved one into the dark and hoped something-anything-might answer, this book is for you.