Antonia Vega, the writer at the center of Afterlife, 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, an immigrant herself, has always sought direction in the literature she loves—lines from her favorite authors play in her head like a soundtrack—but now she finds that the world demands more of her than words.
In this compact and powerful novel, Julia Alvarez 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 ?