A deeply moving family story unfolding in richly evocative prose and a poetic portrayal of a town in decline during the final decades of the American century, Ashland is a book of metamorphoses—of the dance between permanence and transformation. 

In Ashland, New Hampshire, Carolyn, born of a teenage pregnancy, grows up alongside her mother Ellie, her aunt Jennie, and her cousins. Ashland is the type of place that most people plan to leave, but few do. Beauty can be found in small things—the trees in the wind, the sky’s particular shade of blue, a swim in the river, love, and family. But life can often be unforgiving and solace hard to come by. Carolyn reconciles the losses in her own life with an education at Plymouth State, the local university, and then by capturing in words her world and the people who inhabit it.  

Recalling the novels of Richard Russo, Paul Harding, Marilynne Robinson, and Elizabeth Strout, Ashland is a novel of debut great intensity and poetry told in the voices of many vivid characters and, through them, in the voice of Ashland itself. 

TARGET READERSHIP
- For readers of authors like Richard Russo, Paul Harding, Marilynne Robinson, and Elizabeth Strout
- For readers of Virgil Wander by Leif Enger (2018), Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout (2021), Northernmost by Peter Geye (2020), The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty (2022), North Woods by Daniel Mason (2023), Bewilderness by Karen Tucker (2023), The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters (2023).

KEY SELLING POINTS
- Author is the founder and publisher of one of America’s most well-regarded mission-driven independent presses, Seven Stories, and is well regarded by booksellers and critics
- One of rare work of fiction set in New Hampshire
- A quiet but compelling beautifully written work of literary fiction