Preview of Ashes to Ashes Summary:

As with any novel about manifestly social issues, the themes of Ashes to Ashes are not at all separate from its social concerns.

Thus, the primary importance of "family, marriage, and motherhood" in this novel is not at all separate from the issues discussed above.

The very fact that the reader is invited to empathize with Kate Conlan over her divorce and the loss of her child indicates that the novel's implicit world view values marriage and motherhood while at the same time experiencing anxiety over their tenuousness. Kate's past complicates her relationship with Angie DiMarco, the teenaged prostitute for whom she is an advocate.

Although Angie is not Kate's own daughter, their interactions take on many of the qualities of mother-daughter relations.

Implicitly, Angie becomes a surrogate daughter for Kate. Kate remarks that Angie is the same age that her own daughter would have been had she...