Four women. Three families. One decade of incredible change. Auckland,1956. Allie Manaia works at Smith and Caughey's department store. It's been two years since the Dunbar and Jones fire, where some of her friends perished, but she still has nightmares. Allie and her husband, Sonny, are desperate for a baby, after losing a child, and Allie's distress at not conceiving again is compounded when those around her seem to have no trouble falling pregnant - even when they shouldn't.Allie's neighbours have recently moved to suburban Auckland. Ana, now a housewife, misses her work on the farm, but she has her hands full, looking after her increasingly forgetful father-in-law.Kathleen Lawson - rich, lonely and bored - is one of Allies' customers at the make-up counter. Kathleen takes a shine to Allie, but when she discovers Allie's husband is Maori, Kathleen's attitude changes. Is she trying to make friends or poison the relationship between Sonny and Allie?Sonny's beautiful younger sister, Polly, is living a vibrant but wayward life as a waitress-model-goodtime girl while leaving her young daughter to be raised by her mother. Then one day Polly disappears ...Told in Deborah Challinor's trademark style - equal parts heart and humour - From the Ashes is the first in a moving new trilogy that follows the fortunes of the women of three families through the rapidly changing social and cultural landscape of the 1950s and 1960s.Praise for Deborah Challinor:'Challinor is a good storyteller ... seamlessly joining fact and fiction and creating a convincing,atmospheric yarn' Bookseller + Publisher'the perfect blend of fact and fiction' New Zealand Herald