Ash and Honey

Ash and Honey
A Southern Stillness
by Nao

In a Southern town weighted by silence and suspicion,
two girls learn what it means to burn quietly—and still survive.

Billie Rousseau walks like a warning—black boots, cigarette smoke, and a heart stitched with callouses. A Black girl with grease-stained hands and a hunger for something this town has never offered: freedom, or something like it. But when a quiet stranger with dusk in her eyes steps off the train from California, Billie begins to remember what it feels like to be seen.

Aiko Tanaka, called “Annie” by the family forced to take her in, is a Japanese American girl displaced by war and shadowed by rumor. In a place where being different is dangerous, she tucks her truth behind braided hair and careful silences—until Billie’s gaze cracks something open she thought she buried for good.

Set in the American South during World War II,
Ash and Honey: A Southern Stillness is a haunting, poetic novel
told in a powerful dual point of view.

This is a story of forbidden love, resistance,
and the sacred hush between two girls
who dare to want what the world tells them they cannot have.

There is ash in this story.
But there is honey, too.

—

Content Advisory
This novel contains sensitive themes including racism, queerphobia, wartime displacement, and emotional abuse.
Recommended for readers 16 and up.