Tomorrow or Ashes is a story of a determined young woman’s flight from hardship. Millie Day, 19, labors as a low-paid fish-cutter in a processing plant located on the same dilapidated pier where her derelict father committed suicide. She is haunted by it, can’t escape it, that and the pervasive stench of decaying fish in the old wooden pilings, dock and plant building, and on her hands and clothing. She carries the odor from work to home, a single-room crash-pad shared with a drunken, vulgar, neglectful mother and the mother’s degenerate boyfriend.

Predestined to abandonment and more afraid of what it would mean not to, Millie decides to run. For her, it is a choice of tomorrow or ashes: leave and survive or stay and perish. She flees a certain fate but finds it difficult to outrun, her race to a promising future impeded by an unfortunate, defining past. She is hopeful, vulnerable, tough, victimized, compelled and frustrated by the elusive grasp of a fair shake.

One escape leads to another in a dramatic unfolding of threats to Millie’s personal salvation. A single young woman on the run, she finds little support along the way from suspicious authorities and others able to help. Millie’s troubles escalate when newspaper accounts cast her as a suspect in a heinous crime.