From These Ashes

by Tamela J. Ritter

This stunning contemporary Native American novel, From These Ashes chronicles the journey of two siblings looking for “home,” while searching for themselves, each other, their heritage and their destiny. In a center for cult recovery in Phoenix, Arizona, 16-year-old Native American Naomi West refuses to talk; instead she writes — about her life, about her brother, about the prophecy, and about the fire that nearly destroyed it all. Meanwhile, her half-white brother, Tim West, awakes alone in a forest without memories of his past, only an unconscious urge to head west. It is on a Cascade mountaintop where he once again gets too close to a fire, and what starts as a horrifying nightmare wakens him to the truth of his past and a devastating choice that cost him everything. Author Tamela J. Ritter said in an interview that she didn’t originally plan to bring her own cultural heritage into From These Ashes , saying of her own grandmother, Naomi, “What I remember is how proud she was of her heritage, how tightly she held onto it.” Ms. Ritter spins a gripping tale of reservation life, featuring realistically drawn characters and the struggle of young people to figure out where they belong in the world, with heartfelt and nuanced writing. If you love books by Native American authors like Sherman Alexie, Louise Eldritch, and Leslie Marmon Silko, From These Ashes by Tamela J. Ritter is a must-read for your bookshelf that you’ll love to read again and again. “Pick it up if you love Sherman Alexie, stories about Native Americans, family dramas, or even if you love road trips.”
“[I] plan to get a paperback copy of From These Ashes so that I can put Ritter on my shelf alongside Alexie and Silko, where her books belong.”
“This is the best book I’ve ever hated reading. It ripped my heart completely out of my chest.”

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction

210 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2013

About the author

Born in Spokane Washington, she spent most of her formative years dreaming of telling stories in the big city. So much so that she believed that if she followed the “Broadway” that ran through her town far enough, she would eventually arrive in NYC. She wasn’t too bright.

It took her longer than she imagined to wind up in the big city–and then only adjacently. Before that she took her turn as student at the University of Montana were she learned the difference between facts (i.e. the only things that mattered for her degree in journalism) and fiction (i.e. the only things that mattered to her). A few credits short of her degree, she decided she was tired of trees and mountains and moved to Texas. A decision she almost instantly regretted.

But no matter, she soon found herself in Connecticut. The closest she would get to NYC and the closest she would get to a career as journalist, freelancing for the Norwalk Hour’s features section. It was while in Fairfield County Connecticut that she would hone skills and make friends that would allow her to take her writing to the level that it was actually suitable for others to read, and also, perhaps enjoy.

Currently, for reasons that defy logic, she lives and works in Northern Virginia.

Reviews

[Rue Baldry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant read. It combines elements in a way I've never read before. At heart it is about people: their stories, feelings, weaknesses, strengths and ways to recover. It crosses America as Tim weaves through the lives and memories of others, as a blank page with no memories of his own.

Both his amnesia and Naomi's written reminiscences in therapy work as great devices to tell the story. They never feel like dry literary devices, though, they constantly feel real and true. Their revelations are fed out to us at just the right pace so that we don't feel manipulated, but we do feel wonder and then satisfaction.

This story combines Native American Reservations, cults, homelessness & prostitution, domestic abuse, guilt, addiction, cruelty to and by children, love, sex, logging, recovery and the power of the human mind to repress and to reveal.

Tim's journey across America is like a contemporary Odessey and Naomi spends the same time quietly weaving and unpicking her own story, though not always patiently like Penelope. Theirs is the bond of a brother and sister, though, not one of lovers. This is very important and in the end it trumps all other bonds and relationships and loyalties. It's a relationship which is not written this strongly often enough.

I devoured this highly readable book in next to no time and recommend it highly.

[A.J. O'Connell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely pick up this novel. Pick it up if you love Sherman Alexie, stories about Native Americans, family dramas, or even if you love road trips.
"From These Ashes" starts with the words of Native American teenager Naomi, who lost the ability to speak, and who is writing her story to a counselor at a cult recovery center in Arizona.
The novel then follows her half-white brother Tim, who has lost the ability to remember, and who is wandering the Pacific Northwest, trying to understand who he is and where he's come from.
The language is beautiful. Ritter clearly loves the road and the land of the West. As Tim moves from reservation to woods to truckstop to Seattle to the mountains, the land unfolds in such sensory detail that the reader can see the streets and smell the pines. But although the action and the scenery in the Tim chapters are the most dramatic, it is the angry voice of Naomi, who recounts her family's past with an unaccepting tribe and an abusive mother, that kept me reading.

[Ashley Kay Voris · Rating 5 out of 5]

To be honest, this is book I normally would not have bothered to read. Coming-of-age books tend to bore me since they follow the same basic plot line: horrible childhood, horrible teenage years, dealing with past trauma as an adult, some big plot twist, then getting over it and bettering your life and relationships and moving on.

I picked up the book at the launch party. I had met the author a few times and thought, "Eh...why not?" The book sat on my shelf for a few months while I read other books on my checklist. I sincerely regret not reading this book earlier.

I started reading it last night at 10pm. I read until my eyes were having problems focusing and I was reading the same sentence again and again. It was 1am and I was almost done with the book. From the moment I read the first line of the prologue, I was completely and totally immersed. I have a very short attention span and it is hard for me to get lost in a book, much less get lost in a book in a genre I normally do not read. I did not want to stop reading. I wanted to know what happened next.


The story follows a brother and sister, Tim and Naomi, and how being Native American and living a dysfunctional family shapes their lives. Tim suffers at the hands of his peers on the reservation because his father is a white man. Naomi suffers at the hands of their mother. Their mother is a raging, abusive alcoholic with an addictive personality who sees everything she aspires to be in the half blooded Tim, and everything she is in the full blooded Naomi.

Ritter threw in some travelling, homelessness, prostitution, murder, domestic abuse, child abuse- both on children and by children, cults, guilt,emotional rebirth, the importance of love and family, and made the story even more amazing.

By the end of the book, it felt like I was emotionally connected to Tim and Naomi, like they were people I knew and they were telling me about their lives while sitting on my couch. I was that engrossed in the book.

This book is a must read.I thought the story was very well written and very well edited.I didn't notice any grammatical errors and I usually find them rather easily. If there were, I missed them because I was so focused on the story. The author grabs you by the lapels and takes you on one heck of a journey through the reservation, to woods, to Seattle, to Arizona and the Grand Canyon, where you live each scene with the characters. A journey I will happily make again and again. Ms. Ritter, this was brilliant.

[Alexis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Native lit is one of my Things. I read a lot of it and plan to get a paperback copy of From These Ashes so that I can put Ritter on my shelf alongside Alexie and Silko, where her books belong.

I am this book's target audience. I know a lot of the places it goes and, while Tim and Naomi's stories are their own, they're part of a greater narrative with which I was already familiar. That made the book very compelling for me because it's so honest. Ritter's characters always ring true, as does the world she depicts. It's a cold, despairing world at times, but there's a lot of hope and promise, too, which makes the whole thing very beautiful even when it hurts. There really are no villains, just people who are better and people who are worse and a lot of people who are just trying to find something that fits.

The writing is heartfelt and nuanced. I never felt like I was wading through the narrative or getting bogged down. It is definitely not a children's novel - there's violence and sex and substance abuse and profanity, as you'd expect from a writer who doesn't shy away from reality. While the novel is fiction, my feeling as I got deeper into the story was that I was reading about life.

I'll be honest: while I unquestionably give this book five stars, I know not everyone will have my profound emotional response. I definitely recommend From These Ashes to anyone looking for a good read, but your mileage may vary. If you like Native lit, road trip stories, coming of age stories, or stories from the American west, I'm sure you'll love it.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tamela Ritter has written this novel from the heart. It is almost as if she were a medium for the voices of the characters whose stories were real once upon a time. Compelling, beautifully constructed, the tales take the reader on two journeys. This is the story of two native Americans and the devastation they endured but separately until the end. I look forward to Ms. Ritter's next work and congratulate her on this first novel.

[Armond DiRado]

I know the author personally!!! Downloaded it to iPhone!!

[Brad Jensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! What a book! This story pulled me in and held my nose to the pages until the final word. Tamela's writing is vivid and provocative. The story sucks you into the characters crazy lives and keeps you digging deeper into the print to discover what the next page reveals. I don't know if Tamela has any native bloodline in her DNA or not, and quite frankly I really don't care, because her writing and understanding of Native American issues and the challenges they face is quite extensive via research and/or experience. And it seems that her understanding of cults, homelessness, survival and wilderness skills are also quite astounding. Well done, Tamela. Very Well Done!

[Collie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book last May and somehow never quite got around to reading it until this past week. That was my mistake. Once I started it I devoured it. This book is one of those rare and precious gifts: a story that drags you in and doesn't let go. The prose is beautiful, the characters are compelling, and the ending both satisfies and makes you itch for just a little bit more.

[Pat Cummings · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good story


I am Choctaw and found this story very heart warming. I was born in Oklahoma and my father was ashamed to be Indian

[Christie Burgess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning!!

[Dan Verner · Rating 5 out of 5]

My initial impressions of books are often wrong. As I started reading this first novel by Haymarket resident Tamela Ritter, which details the story of Naomi and Tim West, brother and sister who live with a dysfunctional and abusive mother on an Indian reservation in Montana, I thought, “This is an engaging read.” The more I read the more I realized I was wrong. This tale of suffering, separation, redemption and healing is not just engaging—it is riveting.

Naomi tells her part of the story in a flashback memoir, interspersed with her brother’s adventures told in third person. Naomi is a kind of Scout Finch but without the benevolent presence of Atticus. Her alcoholic mother brings home a series of “uncles,” and alternately abuses and coddles Naomi and Tim, who rely on each other for comfort. Naomi delivers arresting lines in the course of telling her story. One chapter begins, “The first time my mother tried to kill me, I was six.” Of her mother’s frequent trips to the local bar, she says at one point when she needs her help, “All my parental guidance was in the saloon, so I figured I’d better stay (there).”

Later on, when she is introduced to her mother’s husband, she is less than convinced that he will be different from the other men she has showed up with and says, “Larry, no offense, but we’ve heard this before.”

Larry replies, “Uh-huh, your mama told me you were a pistol.”

I rolled my eyes, wishing I had a pistol.

Tim’s part of the novel involves his search for a true home. Since he is half Indian, he is bullied by the boys on the “rez” and learns independence and tenacity as he goes on a difficult pilgrimage, wandering like a latter-day Huck Finn without a Jim. He is the “wounded healer” of the novel who finally reaches and creates a home for himself, his sister and his grandfather.

The episodic nature of the story functions as a kind of jigsaw puzzle in which the meaning of each bit is gradually revealed by its relationship to the other parts. It is realistic, at times brutal, at times wistful, but always effective as it moves between the worlds of dysfunction and a vision of an ideal existence. Without giving too much away, the three main characters arrive at an understanding that an ideal existence for them is the most real of all possible worlds.

Tamela Ritter has written an important and touching book. It deserves reading by a wide audience, and I hope it will find that audience.

[Ally · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brother and sister Tim and Naomi West are both lost, in their own ways. Tim wakes up in a forest, alone and with no memory of who he is or how he got there. He sets out on a rambling path, hoping to regain his memories and eventually find his way home.


Meanwhile, Naomi is at a cult recovery center in Arizona, refusing to speak as she maps out the trails that let her there, and waits for Tim to find her again.

This is the best book I’ve ever hated reading. It ripped my heart completely out of my chest. I defy any reader to come away from this story without an intense emotional connection to the characters, and an equally intense empathy for their circumstances.

There is a parallel here between Naomi’s disappointment with her mother’s failure to live up to her parental role, and Tim’s disappointment in the Native culture he idealizes not living up to its traditions. The two siblings deal with their betrayal in completely different ways; Naomi becomes harder, walling herself off, while Tim keeps searching, with increasing desperation for his place. This pattern, which begins early in their life, becomes literal after the events that lead to the beginning of the book. Naomi is living behind a wall of silence, while Tim ranges the American West, looking for someplace to call home.

Ritter’s writing is beautiful, expressive and flawless. She paints urban and rural settings with equal skill, allowing readers to immerse themselves in the story.

This is a book you can’t afford to miss, but be sure to have a box of tissues with you when you crack it open!

[Andrea Brown Riley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not the sort of novel I typically read, but as I know the author personally, I felt it only appropriate to show my support of her amazing achievement in getting her novel published.

This was an amazing story, and as someone who has a strong relationship with her siblings based on some pretty rocky experiences, I really related to Tim and Naomi and their bond. As another reviewer wrote, this really is a tale about the human experience, about self-discovery, about growing from your past, about moving forward even when you don't want to or think you can. It is about healing and love and making the best out of struggles and strife. It is beautiful.

The thing I love most about this novel is the subtle ways in which details are shared. There aren't any overly long sentences to describe a scene or a person, but the small details really draw the reader in and allow them to live there in the moment; it is very well executed.

On the flip side of that, it's really unfortunate that the editor seemed to have only gone through the manuscript once. I can't help but notice all of the mechanical errors littered throughout the book (missing commas, or extra punctuation, words spelled wrong or missing altogether), and at times it was a little distracting. Overall, however, the story itself was enough to let me enjoy the book and do my best to try to forget the errors were there.

4/5 stars; well done, Tamela. :)

[Vannessa Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

From These Ashes chronicle the journeys of siblings Tim and Naomi born seven years apart to a mentally unstable, neglectful, abusive and alcoholic mother. Tim, who just wanted to be accepted, learned the hard way to be careful who you want to call friend. Due to an accident Tim lost his memory and became homeless. When Tim’s memory returned, he remembered “The Way”, the religious fundamental group where his mother had taken him and his sister to live. Naomi, who only wanted to be loved by her mother, learned that a mother’s love was something she would never know so she took drastic matters to free herself of her mother.

Author Ritter did a great job in taking us on the journey with her characters while they went full circle learning the meaning of life, love, their place in the universe and their need to stay close while exploring the psychological aspect of the characters.

[Marisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book -- a gripping story with well-drawn characters.