Janet Finley

Coals in the Ashes Janet Finley

Coals In The Ashes is a novel of emotions and of relationships. The emotions, ranging from comic to poignant, reflect modern reality and induce laughter at times, tears at others. The relationships, also, are indicative of current society: some are constant, others changing; some energizing and supportive, others physically and psychologically draining. The protagonist, Joanna, represents every woman who struggles daily with the real world: despite a college degree, she battles bankruptcy and un/underemployment; her first divorce launches her abruptly into single-parenthood, her second frees her from the world of the alcoholic. Never able to completely transcend her small-town naïveté, she does, nonetheless, gain strength from each experience, a strength also owed, in part, to her potent network of family and friends. Male readers will empathize with Tony, a happily married man and the target of Joanna's intended, short-lived affair-an affair that will outlast her two marriages and offer an alternate, sometimes simultaneous, blessing and curse. Although not a direct cause of either of Joanna's divorces, Tony presents a constant, inextricable force in her life. Their roller-coaster romance/intensifying friendship provides the book's central core and driving force, a bond so unique it forces a questioning of conventional morality.