Afterwards

The Story

Hal Costigan is the kind of man people envy. A candidate for Congress, he has a loving wife, a supportive family, a devoted mother. He is a man on the rise -- until he is caught in an affair with a high-school girl and commits suicide, leaving a family whose futures are irrevocably changed by his act. His mother, sister, brother, and lover are haunted by his memory and cannot find consolation in each other. In Afterwards, Gina Berriault charts the corrosive power of guilt and loneliness and shows us how one terrible act can bind and possess a family forever.