Coming in December 2025

About the Book

In 1871 Alabama, the scars of the Civil War are still raw, and the line between freedom and bondage remains perilously thin. Into this charged landscape walks Angie Sterling, a freedwoman carrying the deed to Briar Gate Plantation—the same land where her family once toiled in chains.

The Sterling name offers her both protection and peril. It ties her to the very family that enslaved her, while granting her legal claim to a place the town would rather see swallowed by weeds and silence. With quiet authority and unshakable faith, Angie refuses to yield her inheritance—even as hostility simmers in the courthouse, the pulpit, and the streets of Rehobeth.

Her presence unsettles everyone:

• Thomas Greer, the plantation’s former overseer, who cannot abide a Black woman owning what he believes should remain his domain.
• Reverend Pike, who twists scripture into condemnation, inflaming his congregation against her.
• The courthouse men, hunting for any pretext to strip her of her deed.

Yet Angie is not alone. At night, a clandestine circle of freedfolk gathers by lamplight, teaching letters, scripture, and discipline. Allies like Ezekiel Turner, a pragmatic veteran, and Clara Mae Johnson, a midwife rooted in faith and folklore, lend strength to her cause. Together, they begin to weave systems of survival: registries to record truth, receipts to counter lies, and drills to keep fear from becoming chaos.

As counterfeit notices spread, as mobs gather in shadow, and as fires spark in the cane rows, Angie insists on order over spectacle. Her fight is not only for land but for memory and dignity, for proof that a people’s worth cannot be erased by rumor or flame. Each page is steeped in the question: What does it take to hold ground when the world conspires to deny you even the right to stand?

By the final reckoning, the fields are charred, the big house in ruin. Yet the true inheritance endures—not in walls or titles, but in the ledger of endurance Angie leaves behind: testimony carved in wood and paper, habit taught to children, and a community bound by witness.

Testament of Ashes is a story of Reconstruction America told not through grand speeches or spectacle, but through systems, proof, and the quiet courage of ordinary people who refuse to be erased.