MAPS
explore the stories behind the story of
The Ash Girl
facts, truths, images, links, treasures, and juicy bits by chapter
Reader Map
where in the world is The Ash Girl on its quest?
MAPS: Chapter 1
When Amelia’s disappearance made itself known as the trigger that started the events of The Ash Girl, I began to dig a bit. The excerpt above inspired the character of Billy Courtright, a US Navy radio operator who receives her last transmission in morse code. Yes, this is a little fictionalized bit of a theory about a historic unsolved mystery!
MAPS: Chapter 2
A word on the theme of occupation in The Ash Girl. We have already seen Frieda occupied by some unseen force that paints the tarot cards with her hands. Now Artemis and Orion occupy humans (folks who have never uttered their names) and through them have children. Both acts are metaphoric (have I beat that drum enough yet?) and fraught with questions of personal agency, the nature of humans and beasts to stake out and claim new territory in the name of survival and expansion, and of course the topics the likes of colonialism, war, and genocide.
MAPS: Chapter 3
Doors between worlds are everywhere in The Ash Girl . . . door in the floor of an attic, the door to the goddesses’ cavern in your dreams, a god and goddess slipping into the body of a man and a woman to experience, briefly, the pleasures of flesh and bone.