A teenage girl is suddenly besieged by assassination plots, abductions, and police corruption, as dangerous secrets emerge from her boyfriend’s past.
Rachael Farrington is sitting on a riverbank when young Jason Beauvale wanders into her life. The two become inseparable, but Rachael’s mother is suspicious of the boy; he’s wealthy and, for reasons of her own, she has no trust for him and his kind.
As the couple become closer, Jason shares a secret: Many years earlier he witnessed his father escape, badly injured, under a hail of bullets. He doesn’t know why it happened, or if his father survived, or why his mother then chose a life in hiding, refusing to speak much of him or their past lives again. These are mysteries that haunt the boy and which he aches to resolve.
In an ironic twist, as the young couple battle against those determined to end their passionate relationship, they are confronted by the very forces that lurked in Jason’s past.
In the turmoil that follows, loved ones soon face abduction, imprisonment and death, as an unscrupulous organization, known as The Syndicate, seeks to fulfill a long-outstanding resolution to which Jason unwittingly becomes the key.
The fight for justice falls to Rachael, but with high-ranking police corruption working to defeat her, how can she alone bring The Syndicate down?
Excerpt
“Sign!” Branagan shouted impatiently.
“You’ll rot where you stand before I —"
The sound of Jason's motor bike came to her and the shock of it took her face before she could conceal it. The rumble grew louder: Jason and Rachael were making their way up the drive. Rebecca knew they were moments away from certain death.
She gasped as Branagan twisted her around and forced her left arm high up behind her back—her bad arm. The pain was searing. Before she could recover, he wrapped his other arm around her waist, ramming the gun barrel hard under her rib cage, pointing it directly toward her heart. The coarse growth on his unshaven chin pressed slowly, menacingly, against her ear as he spoke.
“You’d better do exactly as I say, Becky,” he whispered.
But Rebecca was not about to obey. She would not allow this low-life filth to blackmail and then slaughter all who were so dear to her. She had told herself many times that she loved them more than life itself—and the truth of that was unfolding now.
Professional Reviews
Midwest Book Review
An impressively written and complex saga, "White Ashes" is an absorbingly entertaining read from beginning to end and showcases author John D. Moulton as an exceptionally gifted novelist. Very highly recommended for community library General Fiction collections.
Magic City Morning Star
This novel, "White Ashes", due to its page amount, captured my interest right from the start. From the very beginning of Chapter 1, until I read the final sentence in Chapter 49, this amazing story held my interest.
In my opinion, "White Ashes" has all the necessary ingredients that make a story great. It has romance, hatred, fear, lust, envy, happiness, distrust, suspicion, hope, etc. This suspense-filled story has all the power to keep the reader engaged until the very end and I, for one, hated to see "White Ashes" end.
For me, the writing in every chapter of this manuscript was "believable and insightful." Having read literally thousands of books since the age of eight, I feel that "White Ashes" is nothing short of a "masterpiece" in that the author, John D. Moulton, really was well-prepared when he sat to write this book.
And I sincerely feel that this ""timely, captivating" love story would make a wonderful movie! Kudos to Mr. Moulton, job well-done!
Amazon Top 500 Reviewer
In 1967 teenagers Rachael Farrington and Jason "Jay" Beauvale meet and fall in love. By 1969 their relationship, despite Rachael's mother's objections, is going well but all that is to change when Jay inadvertently brings his past into the present and leads them all into danger.
The novel opens with Rachael fleeing to London without telling her parents. She is obviously upset but there is no explanation of why - it's intriguing and caught my interest immediately. It then uses flashbacks and flashbacks within them to explore their relationship and the reasons behind the danger they face but there is no explanation of why Rachael is so upset on the train to London until well after half way through the novel. As I said it is intriguing and compulsive.
Mr Moulton has a very engaging style of writing - the mystery surrounding Rachael's trip draws you in but the story of her relationship with Jay holds you there. His obvious love for his character Rachael shines through and brings a warmth to the novel which offsets some of violent and nasty behaviour of the bad guys. I also think he has a good ear for dialogue as it all seems very natural and realistic.
White Ashes is a long novel so it's very good value for money but none of it drags and I was glued to the pages from start to finish. It has a bit of everything from mystery to intrigue, action, love and sorrow. If anything, I think the ending was a bit quick in its resolution in comparison to the sprawling, all encompassing nature of the rest of it but it had to end somewhere, I suppose. What is clear is that the past casts a long shadow.
I'm not sure where to start with the characterisation. I particularly liked Mr Moulton's depiction of Rachael's mum Helen. Her distrust of "rich folk" and her desperation to protect Rachael from being dumped by rich boy Jay have a real ring of authenticity about them. The other "good" characters are all very likeable, which is again authentic but it doesn't make them as interesting. The baddies are baddies - greedy, violent and callous.
I think White Ashes is a compulsive read with good pacing in the reveals and in between the details of the teenage romance are interesting and fairly compulsive in their own way (I never thought I would make that statement!). I have no hesitation, therefore, in recommending it as a good read.
The Psychic Dimension, Part II (558 pages) is a collection of 36 sci-fi/paranormal stories and the new work is the companion book to Jay Dubya's The Psychic Dimension.
