Book Review: In the Aftermath

In the Aftermath. Jane Ward, She Writes Press, September 21, 2021, Print and eBook, 342 pages.

Review by Paula Mikrut.

For ten years, Jules and David Herron have owned a bakery together. She bakes, he handles the finances. Business is good—or so Jules thinks—and their biggest problem is the contractor who has abandoned them in the middle of an expansion project.

In truth, the contractor left because he hasn’t been paid. Although he hasn’t told Jules, David took a second mortgage on their house and loaded up on debt during the housing bubble, but it wasn’t enough. By April 2008, the economy is in recession, the bakery’s business is suffering, and the bank is calling. Feeling overwhelmed and isolated, David dies by suicide.

After her husband’s death, Jules finds out that she is on the brink of bankruptcy. She is forced to give up her house, and she hands over control of the business to her father-in-law in exchange for his financial assistance. The anger complicates the grief she feels toward her husband for all that he hid from her.

As the title clarifies, In the Aftermath deals much less with David’s suicide than the people around him who struggle to piece their lives back together after his death. We see the points of view of Jules, their daughter, David’s best friend, and even the banker who managed their loans and the detective who investigated his death.

I don’t mean to imply that this is a depressing read, but it is a serious book about a serious subject, and you can find guilt on every page. The characters are good people filled with questions and regret about things they could have said or done or wish they could unsay or undo. And like what so often happens in real life, their pain is intensified because they keep it to themselves instead of talking to the people who care about them. It’s ironic since one of the main contributors to David’s crisis is his inability to share his problems even with his wife and partner.

This is an absorbing book, and I cared about every character in it. I missed each character as the book moved away from their point of view and worried about whether they would find peace. I especially appreciated the inclusion of the banker and detective. Both were minor players in the tragedy surrounding David’s death, but their actions weighed heavily on them and changed their lives profoundly. Their struggles to move past their mistakes were just as compelling as those of David’s friends and family, and their stories make it hard not to reflect on how many lives we all touch.

My ex-husband died by suicide a dozen years after our divorce, and another ten years after his death, I’m still trying to get past my own sense of guilt. I felt like Jane Ward did an excellent job capturing the upheaval suicide has caused in my life and so many others. As Jules says, “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s how easy it is to make mistakes and how quickly they can seem insurmountable. And how much we all need forgiveness.” In the end, the hardest thing for these characters to do is forgive themselves.