![]() ![]() And yet a reluctant empathy stirs her from her grief. The retired college professor, who once collected ideas for stories in a shoebox in her office, really doesn’t want to get involved with this scenario. He wants her help in bringing his girlfriend – stuck in the powerful clutches of smugglers in Colorado – safely to Vermont. At home, Antonia finds that now she instead of Sam must be the one to answer the problems knocking at her front door – like Mario, one of the undocumented Mexican workers who milks the cows at the farm next door. Her three sisters think a reunion in Illinois to celebrate her upcoming birthday is just what she needs. ![]() If not for herself, then for the others: her three sisters, a few old aunties, nieces and nephews.”īut the chaos of life has a way of interrupting periods of mourning, and this is no different for Antonia. “Countless times a day, and night, she pulls herself back from this edge. “Late afternoons as the day wanes, in bed in the middle of the night, in spite of her efforts, she finds herself at the outer edge where, in the old maps, the world drops off, and beyond is terra incognita, sea serpents, the Leviathan – HERE THERE BE DRAGONS,” writes Alvarez. ![]() The home that Antonia and Sam built together no longer feels like a place of comfort, but instead an unsteady boat on an uncertain sea of loss. Sam’s untimely death (this is no spoiler the opening pages deliver this news) charts Antonia a course she’d really rather not take. Julia Alvarez’s newest novel “Afterlife” explores what happens when the golden years suddenly dim into something unexpected. But everything changes one day when her husband Sam never shows up to a celebratory dinner. This was to be the case for Antonia Vega, a recently retired college professor and writer living in Vermont. Retirement is supposed to be a time filled with family, trips, and hobbies – a finale to a long and satisfying career. ![]()
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