The Literary Works of
M.D. White and
Mary Carroll McKenzie
Ashes To Hope Series
The Still Front: Book One of the Ashes To Hope Series by MD White
This book is a tribute to those who endured not only the battles written in history books, but also the ones history often leaves behind.
It was written to honor the unseen cost of war. Not the strategies or the battles, but the silences that followed. The fields left fallow. The cups left unfinished. The children who waited at windows. The families who endured not for glory, but because they had no other choice.
Though this story is fiction, its shadows are real. They belong to every family that has ever waited for a knock that never came, or found strength in the quiet, or rebuilt with hands that once only trembled.
May we remember the ones who stayed.
The Splinters of Home: Book 2 of The Ashes and Hope Series by MD White
In the shadow of the Appalachian Mountains, where silence lingers longer than sunlight and grief is passed down like heirlooms, the McKenzie family endures. Told through the eyes of an aging matriarch recalling the days that shaped her, The Splinters of Home is a powerful Depression-era family saga of hardship, hope, and the quiet, unshakable strength of women who carry more than they’re ever allowed to name.
As winter grips the mountain and old debts come due, a mysterious black string appears on the gatepost — a sign the locals fear, and one that signals the arrival of something ancient, something owed. What follows is a story of sacrifice, secrets, and survival, where love doesn’t always save—but it always stays. For fans of Where the Crawdads Sing and The Four Winds, this haunting, lyrical tale reminds us that sometimes what’s broken isn’t gone—just waiting to be remembered.
Withering Season: Book 3 of the Ashes and Hope Series by MD White
In the scorched heart of the Oklahoma Panhandle, 1931, the Harlan family stands on the brink of collapse. Their farm—once a symbol of hard-won pride—is swallowed by drought and debt. Faced with auction blocks and dust-choked skies, Thomas, Cora, and their children flee into the uncertain wilds of survival.
But Withering Season is not just a story of loss—it’s a story of what rises from it. As Mae finds her voice in a prairie schoolhouse, Cora stitches her family’s memory into a quilt that outlives the fields, and Thomas learns the quiet strength of letting go, the Harlans begin to rebuild—not land, but legacy.
Through lyrical prose and piercing honesty, MD White crafts a powerful portrait of one family’s journey from ruin to renewal—where the only inheritance worth keeping is love, and the only map forward is made by hand.
The Trench Gospel: Book 4 of the Ashes To Hope Series By M.D. White
In the final month of the Great War, a young American soldier is sent to the edge of the world—and to the edge of his soul.
Benjamin Cartwright didn’t go to France looking for God. He went because he had no choice. No faith. No answers. Just orders and a rifle. But in the mud-slick trenches of 1918, where blood mixes with rain and prayers are whispered between gunfire, something begins to stir. Something that cannot be explained by rank or reason.
Through suffering, silence, and moments that defy understanding, Benjamin is pulled into a different kind of battle—one for his heart, his sanity, and his belief in something greater. What he finds is not the religion he left behind… but a gospel born in fire. In mud. In the breathless crawl between life and death. A gospel that doesn’t promise easy answers— only the presence of a God who never left.
This is not a war story. It’s a story about surviving hell and still choosing to believe. A story about the quiet mercy that finds us when all else fails. This is The Trench Gospel.