Monster in the Ash (After War, Love Fights On.)

Monster in the Ash is a touching family drama and women’s fiction which follows an extended Jewish Family as it grapples with the previously untold post-WWII resurgence of Oswald Mosely’s fascists in East end London.

Sadie Shaposnick survived the war by running a black-market racket out of her husband’s East End butcher shop. When caught, she is rescued not through litigation, but bail money supplied by her sister’s wealthy in-laws – a debt that will not easily be forgotten. Soon after, her husband Leon returns from a German POW camp, profoundly altered by the trauma. Their marriage, now strained, persists more out of habit than love. Sadie and Leon live above the shop with Leon’s brother and his wife. While the men run the business, the women are expected to keep house and raise children. But Sadie remains childless. Leon refuses to bring new life into a world that has revealed its enduring cruelty toward Jews. He has little faith in the rumoured government reforms that Beveridge is working on or the promise of a new British state. His brother, by contrast, avoids politics altogether, investing in domestic stability and the demands of the family business. Tensions run high between the brothers over how best to live in post-war Britain. Like a monster arising from the ashes of war, fascism is once again gaining power, this time in their own streets. The authorities are turning a blind eye to it. Appalled and determined to fight back, Leon joins a vigilante group that meets on Sadie’s own (but now abandoned) shop. Sadie initially resists involvement, wary of further violence and loss. But as attacks escalate, she recognises that resistance may be the only way to protect her community, and perhaps even salvage her faltering marriage. She soon becomes the gang’s secretary, coordinating actions, gathering intelligence, and placing informants among the fascists. In doing so, Sadie discovers a capacity for leadership and resolve she has never before been permitted to explore. Meanwhile, her widowed sister Karla, struggles to raise her daughters within the stultifying comforts of affluence. When her late husband’s brother, Rafi, returns from fighting with armed partisans in Mandatory Palestine, Karla must decide how far she is willing to go to feel alive again. When Rafi crosses paths with Sadie, he is drawn into the struggle as well, sending the gang into even greater peril. When resistance changes roles for women, it changes women’s relationships: with sisters, with families and with the men they love. As political commitment collides with personal cost, this novel explores the intimate consequences of choosing not only to survive, but to fight back.