“Combining elements of The Handmaid’s Tale and Jane Eyre, Ashwood presents a vision of the future that is familiar and chilling (with an energy crisis and food shortage just part of its dystopian vision). Its protagonist Matron Ann takes her place among classic tales where the heroine battles the forces of evil, deciphers friend from foe, solves a mystery, risks her life and unexpectedly finds love. The result is a swiftly paced page turner.”
~David Mura, author of Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire, Turning Japanese,
Where The Body Meets Memory, The Colors of ­Desire, After We Lost Our Way, and
Angels for the Burning

Cynthia Kraack’s immediately transfixing Ashwood deftly swings us into a not-too-distant future of limited natural resources and unlimited challenges, and into the life of a young government worker beginning an assignment as matron of an agricultural estate, where being certain of who you are, who’s watching you, and whom to trust is as hard as the winter further isolating her foreboding new home and the unexpected family it comes to contain.
~Suzanne Strempek Shea, author of Becoming Finola