"Jill is going to break your heart, but along the way make you glad you went with her. Each character holds unique surprises that unveil the intricate magic of this brilliant novel." - Beth Henley, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright "With Life After Life, Jill McCorkle knocks it out of the park and into the cosmos. Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang
"McCorkle finds that space where the humor and the sadness in these characters' lives come together, that space where she has always worked the best of her magic.You are undoubtly changed when you reach the novel's end." McCorkle's masterful microcosm invokes profound sadness, harsh insight and guffaws, often on the same page." - Kirkus "Any residual predictability is dispelled by the jaw-dropping ending. "In the end it's not at all clear that families or childhood loves will reconcile and have happy endings, which is a lot like life." - Publishers Weekly With Life After Life, she has conjured up an entire community that reminds all of us that grace and magic canand doappear when we least expect it. What they eventually learn about themselves and one another will profoundly transform them all.ĭelivered with her trademark wit, Jill McCorkle's constantly surprising novel illuminates the possibilities of second chances, hope, and rediscovering life right up to the very end. As each character ?begins to connect with another, the mysteries and consequences of their lives are revealed. There's retired third-grade teacher Sadie Randolph, who has taught every child in town and believes we are all eight years old in our hearts Stanley Stone, a prominent lawyer, now feigning dementia to escape life with his son Marge Walker, the town's self-appointed conveyor of social status, who keeps a scrapbook of every local murder and heinous crime Rachel Silverman, recently widowed, whose decision to leave her Massachusetts home and settle at Pine Haven is a puzzle to everyone but her C.J., the pierced and tattooed young mother who runs the beauty shop and Joanna Lamb, the hospice volunteer who discovers that her path to a good life lies in helping people achieve good deaths. And the residents, staff, and neighbors of the Pine Haven retirement center (from twelve-year-old Abby to eighty-five-year-old Sadie) share some of life's most profound discoveries and are some of the most true-to-life characters that you are ever likely to meet in fiction. Life After Life is filled with a sense of wonder at our capacity for self-discovery at any age. The majority of chapters are written from Tessa's point of view.Ĭharacters Note: not all characters are listed, only ones essential to the furthering of the plot.Award-winning author Jill McCorkle takes us on a splendid journey through time and memory in this, her tenth work of fiction.
But if Tessa follows her heart now, will it be.the end? Chapters Īfter We Fell includes 107 chapters and alternates between Hardin and Tessa's point of view.
She’s never felt so intensely for anyone, so exhilarated by someone’s kiss-but is the irrepressible heat between her and Hardin worth all the drama? Love used to be enough to hold them together. This cycle of jealousy, unpredictable anger, and forgiveness is exhausting.
Tessa knows Hardin loves her and will do anything to protect her, but there’s a difference between loving someone and being able to have them in your life. And rather than being understanding, he turns to sabotage. The one person she should be able to rely on, Hardin, is furious when he discovers the massive secret she’s been keeping. Revelations about first her family, and then Hardin’s, throw everything they knew before in doubt and makes their hard-won future together more difficult to claim. #HESSA Just as Tessa makes the biggest decision of her life, everything changes. AFTER WE FELL.Life will never be the same. Tessa and Hardin’s love was complicated before.