Dust to Ashes

On a monsoon night in 1947, a poor village boy named Ranganathan kneels beside his exhausted wife and holds his newborn son. He swears, silently, that this child will never know what hunger feels like.

Forty years later, Ranganathan owns textile mills, real estate, a hotel, and a Minister. He is also a man his wife fears, his eldest son refuses to speak to, and his youngest cannot escape — until the day his father commits the unthinkable.
Shantharam flees to America. He flees further into a needle. He nearly dies in a Seattle hallway, where a Salvadoran widow named Dolores covers him with a blanket and decides, against her better judgment, to save him.
What happens after a man is saved is the real subject of Dust to Ashes.

A literary novel on the two faces of power, in the company of Steinbeck, Coetzee, and Yanagihara, Dust to Ashes is a six-decade portrait of ambition, addiction, and the long, quiet work of choosing to give rather than take — even when everything you knew has taught you the opposite.

Contains depictions of domestic violence, sexual coercion, drug addiction, child labor, and human trafficking. Readers sensitive to these themes should approach with care.