On the edge of the cultural earthquake that would be the 1960s, the people who live in the coastal village of Mendocino in 1959 can feel it coming. Beats and Jazz, poetry and art are spilling out of San Francisco onto the northern coasts of California. World War II is laid to rest, but people feel restless. When a village son, now a priest, comes back home to bury his mother, he finds his younger brother gone and a town full of secrets—some of them his own. A youthful mother and her grown daughter find themselves yearning for a wider, more exciting life than what the small village offers, while two brothers taking care of an aging father battle each other and their own spirits as challenges arise to confront them and force them to change. Ember Days, named for the ancient marking of the change from one season to the next, reveals the heart's deep longings and fears in the face of truth and change, life and death.

"Ember Days is a magnificent, rich, and beautifully written story. The people are so real and moving that my eyes often filled with tears and I didn't want the book to end." —Stephanie Cowell, author of Claude & Camille, Marrying Mozart