Altar of Ashes

Before sunrise on a cold November morning, two teenage deer hunters stumble upon a bizarre ceremony deep in a forest glade near Principia, Indiana. A group of mourners has gathered before what looks to be a funeral pyre and, as the boys look on in horror, the mourners begin to chant and a very young girl, no more than a child, enters the glade and mounts the pyre, which is then set alight by the chanting mourners. A later investigation of the pyre's debris will uncover her charred...
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Before sunrise on a cold November morning, two teenage deer hunters stumble upon a bizarre ceremony deep in a forest glade near Principia, Indiana. A group of mourners has gathered before what looks to be a funeral pyre and, as the boys look on in horror, the mourners begin to chant and a very young girl, no more than a child, enters the glade and mounts the pyre, which is then set alight by the chanting mourners. A later investigation of the pyre's debris will uncover her charred remains of ten-year-old Roop Kumar atop the remains of another body. Roop's guardian is shortly afterwards arrested for her murder.Allen Southworth, the local prosecutor, soon finds himself embroiled in a spectacular case. Was this really a case of murder or was Roop's death an act of ritual suicide - a religious ritual protected by the US Constitution? The trial ignites a passionate debate on the issues of religious toleration, cultural bigotry, and multicultural diversity, that will sweep the small community into a vortex of national publicity and communal conflict.