Publication date was October 24, 2023.
ALTAR OF ASHES opens with two young hunters witnessing a horror in the backwoods of Indiana: the sacrificial rite of sati, with the bride on the funeral pyre a ten-year-old girl atop the corpse of her husband.
Allen Southworth, the local prosecutor, soon finds himself embroiled in a spectacular case revolving around issues of religious toleration, cultural bigotry, and multicultural diversity, which sweep the small community into a vortex of national publicity and communal conflict. His marriage already under strain from his own mid-life crisis, Southworth is drawn toward the beautiful Asian-American co-counsel he has sought-out for assistance on the case. His opponent in the courtroom turns out to be his former law-firm counsel, Madison Fulbright, an African-American giant of brilliant legal repute. Ultimately, the case is subsumed along with its principals in the larger zeitgeist of American political conflict and cultural confrontation, impelled toward its unsuspected, astonishing resolution.
Bruce Westrate contributed a chapter on the subject at the center of this novel to Rediscovering the British Empire (Krieger, 2002), titled Acknowledged Truths: Lord Bentinck and the Abolition of Sati.
“Bruce Westrate moves his story from a murder mystery to a legal encounter that embraces some of the undercurrents of adversity and prejudice in America today . . . Westrate shatters emotions and preconceptions of what makes for good and bad legal precedents and how the past reaches out to influence present-day decisions.
“Libraries and readers interested in a compelling blend of ethical and social examination will relish the questions and conundrums in Altar of Ashes, which ignites a sense of shame and revelation in the protagonist after the final outcome is revealed.”
—D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer,
Midwest Book Review
“Bruce Westrate’s novel packs a critical message: If current intellectual trends continue, the most scurrilous epithet in the future may well be ‘Western.’ If current anti-cultural trends lead to the abandonment of what were once universal moral values, to the point where anyone may express themselves any way they like, the results will be not just diversity but depraved mayhem.
—Richard M. Langworth CBE, Author and Churchill Historian
Altar of Ashes opens with two young hunters witnessing a horror in the backwoods of Indiana: the sacrificial rite of sati, with the bride on the funeral pyre a ten-year-old girl atop the corpse of her husband.
Allen Southworth, the local prosecutor, soon finds himself embroiled in a spectacular case revolving around issues of religious toleration, cultural bigotry, and multicultural diversity, which sweep the small community into a vortex of national publicity and communal conflict. His marriage already under strain from his own mid-life crisis, Southworth is drawn toward the beautiful Asian-American co-counsel he has sought-out for assistance on the case. His opponent in the courtroom turns out to be his former law-firm counsel, Madison Fulbright, an African-American giant of brilliant legal repute.
Ultimately, the case is subsumed along with its principals in the larger zeitgeist of American political conflict and cultural confrontation, impelled toward its unsuspected, astonishing resolution.
