From Ashes Into Light by Gudrun Mouw

From Ashes Into Light by Gudrun Mouw 

From Ashes into Light is a transpersonal tale of epic tragedy, spirituality, family, and personal redemption. It is told through three distinct voices: the hauntingly tragic story of Ruth, a Jewish adolescent during Kristallnacht in Austria, Saqapaya, a stalwart Native American from coastal California during the time of the Spanish conquest, and Friede Mai. 

Friede is born during World War II to a Bavarian soldier and a East-Prussian mother. As those around her struggle with the inevitable chaos and paradox of war, Friede opens her heart to gruesome enemies, at times saving herself and family members from atrocities. 

With war behind them, the Mai family immigrates to the US, where Friede, her veteran father and ex-refugee mother, struggle with the reverberations of trauma. Friede is unable to find inner freedom until she meets her spiritual guide, a Rabbi, who helps her see that the voices from the past are teachers and the horrors of history are also beacons of light. 

The three electric characters weave a narrative of raw consciousness, a moving example of transforming the ripple of suffering through the incredible strength of vulnerability.

GUDRUN MOUW

GUDRUN MOUW was born Gudrun Dorothea Wacker in East Prussia in 1944. After her maternal grandfather received deportation papers to Auschwitz, she became a refugee. At the age of 7, she arrived in the United States with her parents as a displaced person.

Gudrun Mouw received her Master’s Degree in English Literature in 1969. In 1978, she received her yoga instructor certificate from the Integral Yoga Institute founded by the late guru Swami Satchidananda.

She has worked as a community college English teacher, a university librarian, a columnist and a California poet-in-the-schools. Ms. Mouw has lived in the Santa Barbara area for 38 years, writing, as well as teaching yoga and meditation.

Her poems have appeared in literary journals such as PRAIRIE SCHOONER, PRACTICAL MYSTIC, THE CHARITON REVIEW, CALYX and others. Ms. Mouw is the recipient of a Sri Chinmoy Poetry Award, a Joycean Arts Guild Award and a Gladys Brown Award for poetry.

Review

From Ashes Into Light by Gudrun Mouw is a historical fiction novel on three main characters:

Ruth, a Jewish adolescent during Kristallnacht in Austria.

Saqapaya, a Native American from California during the time of the Spanish conquest. Friede Mai, born during World War II to a Bavarian soldier and a East-Prussian mother.

I personally liked how the book offered several different perspectives. I always enjoy book that allow the reader to see the story through the eyes of different characters as it allows the reader to learn more about the story without the bias of only one character perspective. I liked the almost magical aspect of the book with how the main characters experience transcendence ( they see through space and time to beyond where they are currently in time and space). I personally found myself liking Ruth the most. I felt like I understood how she coped with everything that was going on around her and I felt sympathetic towards her struggles. I truly enjoyed reading this novel; the author did an amazing job with pulling me in and getting me to keep turning the pages. The author truly did a great job with describing everything I had a clear picture of what was happening in my head for most of the book. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys historically based fiction. I was sent a free copy of From Ashes Into Light by Gudrun Mouw for only my honest and unbiased review of From Ashes Into Light by Gudrun Mouw.