Beneath Ash and Bone
D. Alexander Ward
Bedlam Press
February 23, 2016
Reviewed by Rose Blackthorn
Sheriff Sam Lock is a man who prides himself on his logical thinking and pragmatism, so different from his father who had been sheriff before him. But in the winter of 1860, when he is summoned to the Crownhill estate to investigate the report of a missing child, he has no idea how far from logic he’ll have to go to uncover the truth.
Beneath Ash and Bone begins with Sheriff Lock’s introduction to the Crownhills, a wealthy family whose power and prestige has set them apart from their neighbors, and kept their dark secrets safe for years. At the house known as Evermore, he meets Charlotte, the daughter of Horace Crownhill, and aunt of the missing child. As he begins the search for William, the missing boy, he attempts to ignore the burgeoning attraction he feels for Charlotte, and the disquiet he feels at Evermore.
The tale moves quickly from the mundane events of searching through a blizzard for William, to the strange and almost unbelievable things he finds in the plantation house itself. Hidden passageways lead to dark secrets tucked away in the attic, and to horrible truths long concealed in the past. Soon, Sheriff Lock must admit there is more to Evermore than meets the eye, and he’ll go through his own version of hell before solving the mysteries that brought him here.
Beneath Ash and Bone by D. Alexander Ward is available on Amazon for Kindle or in paperback. The writing is descriptive, the characters intriguing, and there are places in the story that genuinely gave me chills. At 172 pages, it’s a fairly quick read, but it will pull you in and drag you all the way to the end, never quite knowing if you’ll be able to escape.
