From the canon

Roots in the Ash

A family driven from Scotland attempts to build a future in Ireland, but failed rebellions, political vengeance and buried secrets bind later generations to the same patch of earth.

Book summary

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1686-1849

The opening novel of Trees from Ashes follows the MacKail family from the late seventeenth century into the twentieth. After the upheavals surrounding the Jacobite cause, Torin MacKail and his descendants establish Killiecrankie Farm in Ireland. Their attempt to build a secure home is repeatedly tested by rebellion, bereavement and suspicion.

The family loses sons at Sheriffmuir, Preston, Glen Shiel and Culloden. Robbie MacKail later inherits not only the farm but the political danger attached to the family name. His arrest and execution in 1751 leave his children to defend their home through law, memory and silence.

Across subsequent generations, the family’s branches move through France, Russia, Ireland and America. By 1964, the opening of an abandoned well reveals that parts of the family history have survived in forms no one expected.

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Roots in the Ash

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House by the Turning Ground (Original)

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An AI-generated interpretation from the world of Trees from Ashes. Lyrics developed with ChatGPT under Ian Clarence’s direction; music and vocals generated using Suno.

The novels

Enter the canon

Book One of The Trees from Ashes Saga

Roots
in the Ash

1686-1849

From the Jacobite age to the discovery of a hidden family legacy, the opening novel follows the MacKails through rebellion, exile, execution and survival as one Irish farm becomes the keeper of truths that generations fail to understand.

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Book Two of The Trees from Ashes Saga

Shoots
from the Ash

1849-1950

The family story crosses Russia, Ireland and America as revolution, Titanic and two world wars reshape the descendants of Killiecrankie Farm. Survival brings new homes, but inherited secrets continue to travel with them.

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Book Three of The Trees from Ashes Saga

Where
Branches Meet

1537-1689, 1950-1972

In post-war Naples, Joe MacKail’s gift for music creates a life his ancestors could never have imagined. As separated branches of the family draw together, old objects and unfinished stories acquire new meaning.

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Book Four of The Trees from Ashes Saga

Fruits
from the Ash

1973-1986

Rosanna MacKail emerges from private grief into international fame, love and motherhood. Yet the past remains present in her music, her family and the questions that follow her from Italy to Ireland and Leningrad.

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Book Five of The Trees from Ashes Saga

House of
the Half-Told

1751-1813

Declan MacKail inherits a farm shadowed by his father’s execution and by truths deliberately withheld. His first-person account reveals the private cost of keeping a family alive when its history can never be told whole.

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Book Six of The Trees from Ashes Saga

A Name
in Cyrillic

1793-1874

Fleeing revolutionary Paris, Rory MacKail reaches Russia and builds a household beneath another form of his name. Science, love and exile give him a future, but never release him entirely from the family that believes him dead.

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Book Seven of The Trees from Ashes Saga

The Son
Without a Name

1740-1751

Lucien Alexandre Morel is born in France with his mother’s surname and Robbie MacKail’s blood. Denied the MacKail name, he grows into the shadow of a father whose ambition has already begun to corrupt An Scáth Dorcha, drawing him towards Ireland, inheritance and a legacy built on secrecy.

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Book Eight of The Trees from Ashes Saga

The Stone
Before the Ash

1265–1340, 1675

Before MacKail Croft, before Killiecrankie Farm, before the ashes, one family’s story begins with a broken oath, a threatened claim, and a stone raised against forgetting.

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Book Nine of The Trees from Ashes Saga

Woman
in the Frame

1990-1993

Rosanna MacKail-Jones enters the world of cinema, where a public image can preserve, distort or conceal the woman behind it. Fame opens another chapter in the canon while testing marriage, identity and artistic loyalty.

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