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A suspended arson investigator. A pastor who won't stop telling the truth. Seven women who built the evidence that could bring down the most powerful man in the county — and died before anyone believed them.
Nora Callahan arrives in Granger's Hollow, Oregon, to close a fire file. She finds two accelerant origins where the official report shows one, a covered-up investigation, and a burned church full of things that were never meant to survive.
The fireproof box in the ruins contains eight months of meticulous documentation — photographs, signed statements, financial records, and a recording — compiled by a group of women who understood that feelings weren't evidence, and that evidence was the only thing that would hold. They were right. Someone made sure they didn't live to see it.
With her credentials suspended, the official channels compromised, and a man named Denton Harwick capable of reaching further than she'd anticipated, Nora has approximately no time and exactly one ally: Eli Greer, the former pastor of the burned church, who got two women out and has been living in the rubble of the rest ever since.
As Nora builds the case that Maren Costello started, she finds herself navigating something she's less practiced at than arson — the specific work of letting someone else carry part of the weight.
EYES LIKE EMBERS is a novel about what it takes to prove the truth, what it costs to carry grief alone, and what happens when two people who have both gotten very good at the performance of being fine find each other in a place where neither of them can manage it anymore.
A suspended arson investigator. A pastor who won't stop telling the truth. Seven women who built the evidence that could bring down the most powerful man in the county — and died before anyone believed them.
Nora Callahan arrives in Granger's Hollow, Oregon, to close a fire file. She finds two accelerant origins where the official report shows one, a covered-up investigation, and a burned church full of things that were never meant to survive.
The fireproof box in the ruins contains eight months of meticulous documentation — photographs, signed statements, financial records, and a recording — compiled by a group of women who understood that feelings weren't evidence, and that evidence was the only thing that would hold. They were right. Someone made sure they didn't live to see it.
With her credentials suspended, the official channels compromised, and a man named Denton Harwick capable of reaching further than she'd anticipated, Nora has approximately no time and exactly one ally: Eli Greer, the former pastor of the burned church, who got two women out and has been living in the rubble of the rest ever since.
As Nora builds the case that Maren Costello started, she finds herself navigating something she's less practiced at than arson — the specific work of letting someone else carry part of the weight.
EYES LIKE EMBERS is a novel about what it takes to prove the truth, what it costs to carry grief alone, and what happens when two people who have both gotten very good at the performance of being fine find each other in a place where neither of them can manage it anymore.