From Ashes Into Light

Book excerpt: A transpersonal tale of epic tragedy, spirituality, family, and personal redemption, this historical novel is told through three distinct voices: the hauntingly tragic story of Ruth, a Jewish adolescent during Kristallnacht in World War II Austria, Saqapaya, a stalwart Native American from coastal California during the time of the Spanish conquest, and Friede Mai who is born during WW II to a Bavarian soldier and an East-Prussian mother. As those around Friede struggle with the inevitable chaos and paradox of war, she opens her heart to gruesome enemies, at times saving her and her family members from atrocities. With war behind them, the Mai family immigrates to the US, where Friede, her veteran father and ex-refugee mother, struggle with the reverberations of trauma. Friede is unable to find inner freedom until she meets her spiritual guide, a Rabbi, who helps her see that the voices from the past are teachers and the horrors of history also contain beacons of light. The three electric characters weave a narrative of raw consciousness, a moving example of transforming the ripple of suffering through the incredible strength of vulnerability.