Two unlikely worlds collide in Sheila Peters's first novel, The Taste of Ashes, a story of redemption and the resilience of the human spirit, even at its most frail and vulnerable.

Isabel Lee's early life in rural BC was forever changed by a brief but powerful love affair with a young Oblate priest. Now a recovering alcoholic, Isabel struggles to pull the tattered fragments of her life together and repair the damage to her relationship with her estranged daughter.

Once idealistic and hopeful, Father Àlvaro Ruiz now has his own demons to confront. Brutally tortured at the hands of the Guatemalan authorities and unable to escape the wounds of his past, Àlvaro returns to Canada seeking sanctuary, a broken man with a tenuous grip on his faith in God and humanity.

Isabel's and Àlvaro's stories slowly weave together and they are eventually faced with their greatest challenge yet: can they carry on in the wake of the damage and bring themselves to forgive? Compelling, disturbing but ultimately hopeful, this is the story of how we find grace in the most unexpected places.

Born and raised in the coastal town of Powell River, BC, Sheila Peters went to Carleton University in Ottawa to study journalism; after graduation, a newspaper job brought her to Smithers in Northern BC. Her work has appeared in several Canadian literary journals, including Event, Prairie Fire, Grain, the Malahat Review and Descant. She is the author of Canyon Creek: A Script (Creekstone Press, 1998) and Tending the Remnant Damage, a collection of linked short stories (Beach Holme Press, 2001). Sheila and her husband own and operate Creekstone Press. They have two grown sons and live in Smithers, BC.

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The Taste of Ashes does not feel like a first novel. Its carefully crafted, multi-layered family narrative is complex and lyrical in a way that reveals Peters’s history as a poet and short-story writer”… The Taste of Ashes isn’t just the complicated history of one small town family, it’s a lyrical, richly detailed saga that draws the reader into the complexity of family relationships and ultimately reveals that redemption and healing are always possible. The Taste of Ashes is a novel to savor.

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