A life too untidy for a statue.
The book follows Evelyne from the forge of her childhood into exile, the making of the Ashen Guard, her bond with Seal, her partnership with Commander Rael, the northern campaigns, York, loss, return and the long transformation from a difficult blacksmith's daughter into a name people carried long after the battles ended.
It is not being written as a catalogue of victories. Evelyne fails. She misjudges people. She loses those she loves. She is frightened, furious, funny, proud, compassionate and occasionally impossible. The legend matters because the woman underneath it was allowed to be human.
“Someone has thought my life worthy of ink.”
Someone has thought my life worthy of ink.
I cannot pretend to understand why.
I held no crown. I founded no kingdom. I was not always victorious, nor was I always right. I was a blacksmith's daughter who became angry at what powerful people did to those who could not answer them — and who was stubborn enough, or foolish enough, to stand in their way.
You may ask whether I was real.
Was I woman, legend, lie, memory or warning?
I can tell you only what the statues do not.
The woman before the legend.
The opening of the book deliberately challenges the cleaner versions of Evelyne's story. It leaves in the blood, the temper, the foolish decisions, the pride, the grief and the people who sometimes had to turn back for her.
That is the heart of From Ash We Rise: not that Evelyne was unbreakable, but that falling was never the final line of her story.
“Not every truth is kept in ledgers. Some are kept in scars. Some in songs.”From the preface — Lady Evelyne Harper