Book 1 · The North Pointe Chronicles
The House
of Salt
and Ash
"Because some houses endure. And some are tested."
Dr. Jarod L. Cruthis
When Jonah Garrison returns to the coast he once abandoned, he intends only to bury the dead, settle what remains, and leave the old country to its silences. But some places do not release a man so easily. Some wait.
At the edge of marsh and dark water stands North Pointe, an aging estate of warped timber, salt-stained halls, and rooms that seem to remember more than they should. The town watches from a distance. Doors close when he passes. Names are spoken softly. Questions linger where answers ought to be.
What begins as a homecoming soon turns into something stranger: a reckoning with blood, land, and the unseen forces that bind both to memory. In Salter's Cove, inheritance is not always a gift, and the past is rarely buried where it was laid.
"Brooding, lyrical, and steeped in menace — a Southern Gothic tale of buried history, haunted loyalties, and the terrible weight of coming home."
Some places do not release a man so easily...
From the Author
"This is not the book many expected me to write."
Some will be startled. Some will be disappointed. Some will question how a man in ministry could allow certain scenes to breathe on a page. Others will read quietly and recognize something they have never seen reflected at them before. I wrote this knowing all of that. I wrote it anyway.
Fiction gives me room to tell emotional truth without turning confession into spectacle. Every scene is intentional. Every symbol carries weight. Nothing here exists to titillate. It exists to confront.
This story draws a line against silence. And it opens a door toward healing.
- DR. JAROD L. CRUTHIS
Note: This book contains mature themes and is intended for adult readers.
Dr. Jarod L. Cruthis
Psychotherapist · Bishop · Author
Dr. Jarod L. Cruthis writes from the kind of South that remembers everything — its hymns and its harm, its sanctuaries and its silences. He was shaped by red clay, salt air, Scripture, and the complicated inheritance of land and lineage.
A psychotherapist and Bishop, he has spent his life in rooms where pain speaks plainly — across from men and women wrestling addiction, trauma, grief, shame, and the long echo of rejection. That work has stripped him of easy answers. It has also sharpened his conviction that every human being bears an inviolable dignity no institution can grant and no institution has the right to deny.
Though he carries the office of Bishop, Dr. Cruthis is not a curator of hollow tradition. He stands in the stream of ancient faith, but he refuses to weaponize it. He is a fierce advocate for social justice, equality, and the full humanity of those too often pushed to the margins.
He does not write safe stories. He writes about rage, desire, legacy, collapse, inheritance, and redemption — because real faith lives in the dirt, not in stained glass.
He lives in North Carolina with his wife, whose strength and steadiness ground both his vocation and his voice. Together they navigate the intersection of healing, faith, and story — believing that redemption, like justice, demands embodiment.
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The North Pointe Chronicles · Book 1
The House of Salt and Ash
Dr. Jarod L. Cruthis
© 2026 Dr. Jarod L. Cruthis. All rights reserved.