Cynthia Kraack's immediately transfixing Ashwood deftly swings us into a not-too-distant future of limited natural resources and unlimited challenges, and into the life of a young government worker beginning an assignment as matron of an agricultural estate, where being certain of who you are, who's watching you, and whom to trust is as hard as the winter further isolating her foreboding new home and the unexpected family it comes to contain." –Suzanne Strempek Shea, author of Becoming Finola