Ashes to Water

an intriguing psychological amateur sleuth who-done -it

In 1962, Helen Bartlett, a nurse and mother of two daughters, drowns herself in Widow Lake, Florida near their family house. Her children Leigh and Annie blame their fathered for their mom killing themselves. Annie begins talking and seeing her mom's spirit as the child believes her mother became a mermaid.

In 1981 DeLeon Deputy Sheriff Raina Salceda calls Annie who resides in Michigan that her father was murdered by his live in girlfriend Della Frome who bashed his head in with an oar. Annie calls Leigh in Atlanta. Engaged to a nice man with a teenage daughter problem, Annie travels to DeLeon where her childhood best friend Pete Duncan meets her at the airport. He is also Della's defense attorney, but he feels the evidence is so overwhelming that he wants to plea bargain. After seeing her dad's corpse, Annie visits Della in prison; the woman eerily looks like her mom circa 1962 and insists developer Kingfisher Powell killed Ed whom she says she loved. Annie begins asking questions as her mom's spirit tells her to stop as does her sister who needs the money due to her abusive boyfriend who insists that they would get it if Della is convicted as they would inherit and sell the land.

Ashes to Water is an intriguing psychological amateur sleuth who-done -it. The murder investigation is well written, but supports a deep look at two sisters who as adults cope differently with their mother killing herself though they share in common holding their father culpable. Whereas Annie "communicates" with her mom's ghost, Leigh has been involved in a serial string of bad relationships. Readers will appreciate this fascinating thriller as Annie seeks the truth about her parents as much as who killed her dad while Leigh wants to sell the property. Character driven (even from the grave), Irene Ziegler provides a powerful thriller (see Rules of the Lake, not read by me, for Annie's previous appearance).

Harriet Klausner

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Engaging Mystery

Annie Bartlett has returned to her hometown and the memories she fled from years ago. She received a call that her father, Ed, has been murdered and his current girlfriend has been charged. Annie and her sister, Leigh, grew up in a household full of anger and recrimination. Her father was a serial adulterer and her mother, a nurse, committed suicide when the girls were still young.

Leigh grew up to be the girl she thought her father was attracted to as she attempted to get his attention. Flitting from man to man, her beauty her weapon, she has become mired in addiction and a dead-end life. Annie took a different route. She rejected everything about her upbringing and left town the minute she could get enough money to do so. She has carved out a good life for herself, engaged to a man she loves and has a career as a photographer.

Now both girls are back and trying to make sense of what has occurred to their father. Did the girlfriend kill him over another woman as the police believe? Or were the other tensions in town involved? There is an arsonist at large and Ed seemed to know something about that. Then there is the struggle between developers who wanted Ed's lakeside house and the people in town who were fighting against having their area changed from a sleepy lakeside town to a major tourist area replete with casinos and the crime and changes that brings. Can Annie find out what has happened before the town pulls her back into her former life and the heartbreak it brought? Will the truths she learns as she struggles to find out what has occurred help her also make sense of her upbringing?

Irene Ziegler has written an engaging mystery. Her characters are complex and the plot twists and turns satisfactorily. In addition to the mystery, there are themes of past issues resolution, conflict between development and tradition, and the struggle of characters to move past what was done to them as children and to become strong, independent adults. This book is recommended for mystery lovers.

Welcome Back, Annie Bartlett

In 1999, Ziegler published Rules of the Lake, and it quickly became one of my favorite short story collections. It was there that I first met Annie Bartlett, her sister Leigh, and their parents, Ed and Helen. For the past 10 years, I have missed the Bartletts terribly-especially Annie and Leigh, two characters who, while individually engaging, also give us a pitch-perfect sisterly relationship, one filled with both tension and love. (In Rules, we meet Annie and Leigh as children in the early 60s of Central Florida; Ashes to Water joins them in 1981 when they meet there to deal with and explore the circumstances surrounding their father's murder.) The adult versions of Annie and Leigh make perfect sense given what we've been shown of their childhoods-but they also surprise us. It was so, so gratifying to not only see some minor characters from Rules move center stage, but also to hear echoes of the short stories, expertly woven into Ashes, appearing as characters' memories providing insights into their motivations, and as background to important plot points. While the whodunit aspect of Ashes is totally entertaining and engrossing, I think to cast this only as a murder mystery sells the book-and Ziegler's talent and nascent oeuvre-short. Sure, we want to know who killed Ed Bartlett, but Ashes is also the story of Annie and her drowned mother, a relationship explored movingly in Rules through the metaphors of mermaids and breathing underwater-a theme that bubbles to the surface in Ashes. Widow Lake, which in Rules is a place of imagined childhood mystery, becomes the site of true mystery in Ashes. Annie's childhood friend, Petey Duncan, who appears as a stuttering and skittish neighbor in the short story The Raft, is now the quite grown-up lawyer in Ashes charged with defending the woman accused of killing Ed Bartlett. Even one of my favorite minor characters from Rules, the prissy and annoying Pamela Hooks, makes a cameo appearance in Ashes, as a neighbor who comes to welcome Annie back to her hometown of DeLeon, though viewed through Annie's now adult and more sympathetic eyes. (If you remember Pamela from Rules, you'll appreciate that she grew up to be a track-suit wearing pusher of megavitaman products.)

And perhaps most powerfully, Ashes continues the story of the metamorphosis of Central Florida, from its pre-Disney days of innocent and magical tourist attractions like alligator farms and Cyprus Gardens, through the commercialization of the Seminole Indian culture, to the over-development and relentless paving over of Old Florida. Rules of the Lake opened my eyes to a Florida that is increasingly more difficult to find amid the Epcots, WalMarts, HolyLand Experiences, Hooters, and Bahama Breezes. Reading these works, we feel not only Annie's love for her hometown and Widow Lake, but her sadness as she chronicles the changing landscape around her. It's a perfect metaphor for what's happening to Annie herself over the course of the books. In Rules the changes are melancholy and wistful; in Ashes they are violent, and the impending death of Old Florida is reflected in the disintegration of relationships, in unseemly competition for land, and in literal deaths (this is, still, a murder mystery). I suggest picking up both Rules and Ashes. The two offer a rich interweaving of lives and stories. I hope Ziegler continues to explore the world of Annie Bartlett, but I hope we don't have to wait another 10 years.

Wonderful mystery, wonderful novel

I loved Ashes to Water. A creepy town with skeletons in its closet, a lovable, flawed hero who returns to claim her father's body, an out of control sister with a bad habit for drugs and dangerous men...a great recipe for a novel. This book was a true "page-turner." But the language was so wonderfully written I didn't want to rush the experience! Do yourself a favor and buy Ashes to Water today!

Advance Praise for Ashes to Water

Ashes to Water strikes the perfect balance between page-turning thriller and pitch-perfect literary novel. A marvelously accomplished piece of writing, pulsing with rich characters and lush landscape."

-Pinckney Benedict, author of Town Smokes and Wild Bleeding Heart.

Ashes to Water is a compelling and nuanced novel with a rich and complex character at its center. Irene Ziegler is an extremely talented writer who has gone straight to my must-read list.

-Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Good Scent From a Strange Mountain, and Tabloid Dreams.

Ziegler does a fabulous job-great descriptions, wonderful plot, perfect timing, great arc, fascinating and full characters, natural dialogue-the whole thing adds up to a PAGE TURNER!

-Emyl Jenkins, author of The Big Steal.

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