The Book of Ash — James Flint

Wonderfully told, funny and touching, The Book of Ash is the story of a son's search for his father and his struggle to understand his family and the adult world. Twenty years ago Cooper James' life was torn apart. His family collapsed among the claustrophobic confines of a rural hippy commune. Cooper hasn't seen his father since the day his adultery was uncovered. As an adult he tries to forget his bizarre past and get on with the present but when a coffee canister, sent from America, filled with a strange grey dust arrives at his work, he is called before his superiors to explain. If it is not an anthrax hoax, then what is it? Could it be the ashes of his father. And if so, how has it found its way to him? Cooper leaves Britiain for the United States where he tries to piece together the shards of his father's life from the conflicting accounts of his wierd and highly unreliable friends. And through these encounters he learns all the things that his father might have told him, father-to-son - and what really happened the night his father left.