Isabel carries a handful of seeds. At the end of the book, she is separating the rotten seeds from the good in preparation for farming a piece of her own land. The series of books that Ashes concludes is, not coincidentally, called Seeds of America. What symbolic role do seeds play in this story?

It’s clear to everyone but Isabel that she’s in love with Curzon. How does Anderson lead the reader to see this before Isabel does, and why?

Look up the names that Anderson gives her characters. Why might she have chosen “Isabel,” “Curzon,” “Aberdeen,” and “Ruth” as the names of her heroes? What meaning can you find in the history and associations of these names?