Beauty from Ashes

Beauty from Ashes is fiction and is a compilation of stories written for the author's wife as she battled leukemia. This compilation is a continuation of the author's book, Harbingers of Spring, in that it presents the growth of a festival over several decades in the Sweetwater Valley of Brown County, Indiana. This area is a location where the author spent his childhood years, where his grandfather's farm was located. There is no festival located there, only beauty, and the site still has the location of the author's grandmother's house where it sat before it burned to the ground. Rebuilding it would be senseless, as it originally sat too close to the road. An attempt was made, herein, to present a story of equality and diversity and describe what that might look like if all concerned strove for the same goal. Ugly is a presentation of racism concerning the mother of the author's childhood girlfriend. The mother presents total unbiased interactions, except toward one neighbor child. Isaiah 61 is used to outline the ups and downs of progress toward a multifaceted goal. In every situation and every confrontation, the author attempts to show an actuality of beauty developing from conflict and cruelty. It presents the human predicament through the inclusion of the most radical and diverse characters the author can imagine, all working together to achieve happiness. The forbidden love between a mixed child and a White child is a continuous thread throughout the book, with an almost conclusion, when in old age and helplessness, he is murdered and dies being cared for by his lover. The conclusion is from Genesis 1:2, Job 33:4, and Numbers 27:16 regarding the Hebrew word Ruach, wherein God's name is referred to as the sound of a breath, wherein we whisper God's name in every breath of our life and close our life with one final recognition of our living God. Love triumphs.This is the author's third book. He also wrote Butterfly Wars and Harbingers of Spring.

-- David Roller