Afterlife - Grand Format

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 ?