Ashes and Snow, a lifelong project for artist and author Gregory Colbert, originated sixteen years ago as a literary endeavor that soon inspired photographic artworks and an accompanying film. Colbert, like the character in the novel, composed the letters on many journeys to such places as India, Burma, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Dominica, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tonga, and Namibia. The novel echoes many of the themes expressed in Colbert's images. Provocative, contemplative, and passionate, the letters chronicle an inward and outward exploration of memory and love. (The book collects 74 of these letters, as some were blown from the window or lost in transit. Blank pages in the novel sometimes represent the missing letters.)