The law still stands, technically.
But only in the buildings that haven't collapsed.
And even there—it forgets how to listen.

In The Ash-Bound Republic, the Whitman family steps into the literal and symbolic ruins of what once governed them. After civic fires—metaphorical, legal, actual—what remains is dust, dissent, and the chance to choose differently. Clara Whitman leads a small coalition not to restore, but to re-story: rewriting the civic liturgy in oral declaration and street assembly.

Meanwhile, an archive technician named Reuben discovers one last unburned clause tucked in a hollowed anthem case. It doesn't save the nation. But it might remind it how to exhale.

This isn't a book about saving the republic.
It's about mourning what it became—and choosing how to move amid its bones.