TAMMY PASTERICK
It’s Pittsburgh, 1910—the golden age of steel in the land of opportunity. Eastern European immigrants Janos and Karina Kovac should be prospering, but their American dream is fading faster than the colors on the sun-drenched flag of their adopted country. Janos is exhausted from a decade of twelve-hour shifts, seven days per week, at the local mill. Karina, meanwhile, thinks she has found an escape from their run-down ethnic neighborhood in the modern home of a mill manager—until she discovers she is expected to perform the duties of both housekeeper and mistress. Though she resents her employer’s advances, they are more tolerable than being groped by drunks at the town’s boarding house.
When Janos witnesses a gruesome accident at his furnace on the same day Karina learns she will lose her job, the Kovac family begins to unravel. Janos learns there are people at the mill who pose a greater risk to his life than the work itself, while Karina—panicked by the thought of returning to work at the boarding house—becomes unhinged and wreaks a path of destruction so wide that her children are swept up in the storm. In the aftermath, Janos must rebuild his shattered family with the help of an unlikely ally.
Impeccably researched and deeply human, Beneath the Veil of Smoke and Ash delivers a timeless message about mental illness while paying tribute to the sacrifices America's immigrant ancestors made.
2022 16th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards Winner in Historical Fiction
2022 International Book Awards Finalist in Fiction: Historical
2022 IPPY Awards Silver Winner in Mid-Atlantic (Best Regional Fiction)
2022 Eric Hoffer First Horizon Book Awards Finalist
2022 Eric Hoffer Book Awards Montaigne Medal Finalist
2022 Eric Hoffer Book Awards Grand Prize Short List
2022 Eric Hoffer Book Awards Honorable Mention in Historical Fiction
2022 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Competition Finalist
2021 Goethe Book Awards Finalist for Post -1750s Historical Fiction