The Echo of Ashes

Elias Thorne is twelve years old. He paints robins. He has never hurt anything in his life.

Then a scan meant to help him with his night terrors finds something no machine was ever meant to find. Science has finally proved that the soul survives death and comes back, and the pattern living inside this quiet boy from the Black Forest matches one man with 99.3% certainty.

Adolf Hitler.

Weeks later, his name is on every screen on earth. His home is burning. Half the world wants him dead, and the rest want him for reasons of their own.

Now Elias sits alone in a chair too big for him, his feet not reaching the floor, before a court built for the questions no other court can answer. Defending him is Mina Elbaz, a human rights lawyer whose great-grandmother was murdered in the camps. Against him stands Auguste Roche, the most respected jurist alive, who believes the boy is innocent and argues he must die anyway.

Can a child be guilty of a life he never lived? And if something really did come back, what do you do when it's twelve?

The Echo of Ashes is Book One of a trilogy: a gripping courtroom drama and a haunting moral thriller about guilt, grief, mercy and what we become when we are afraid.