Afterlife

Resource Information

The work Afterlife represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Charleston County Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Audio, Musical, Music.

Label

Afterlife

Creator

• Alvarez, Julia

Subject

• Fiction
• Literature

Summary

The author of In the Time of the Butterflies, with more than one million copies in print, is back with a tour de force. Antonia Vega, the immigrant writer at the center of Afterlife, has had the rug pulled out from under her. She has just retired from the college where she taught English when her beloved husband, Sam, suddenly dies. And then more jolts: her bighearted but unstable sister disappears, and Antonia returns home one evening to find a pregnant, undocumented teenager on her doorstep. Antonia has always sought direction in the literature she loves—her favorite authors' lines play in her head like a soundtrack—but now she finds that the world demands more of her than words. Afterlife is a compact, nimble, and sharply droll novel. Set in a small Vermont town, it shows how culture and politics intersect with place and asks: What do we owe those in crisis in our families, including—maybe especially— members of our human family? How do we live in a broken world without losing faith in one another or ourselves? And how do we stay true to those glorious souls we have lost?

Accompanying matter

technical information on music