A Torah survives the war. A rabbi must decide what survival means. In postwar Kraków, Rabbi Yaakov Lieberman is hired to locate a centuries-old Torah scroll hidden during the Nazi occupation. When he finds it intact-fragile, irreplaceable, and heavy with history-what should be a recovery becomes a reckoning. The scroll draws the attention of officials, patrons, and institutions eager to preserve it. But preservation has its own violence, and Yaakov understands something they do not: a sacred object is not only something to be protected, but something that demands accountability from the person who holds it. As pressure mounts, Yaakov confronts the faith he abandoned long ago. The Torah becomes a mirror of his own fractured beliefs, forcing him to reckon with responsibility in the absence of certainty, and with the difference between possession and custody, belief and practice. Written with restraint and moral precision, Ashes of Faith is a literary novel about what survives catastrophe-and what it costs to carry it forward. It is a story of quiet courage, ethical tension, and the enduring struggle to stand upright when no choice is clean. For readers of thoughtful historical and literary fiction, Ashes of Faith is a powerful meditation on faith after loss, and on what remains after the carrying.