The Sweet Hereafter (Paperback)

When children are lost, parents are left in a sort of amoral timelessness, without history or perspective. The future disappears, and suddenly everything is permitted. The freedom is lonely and terrifying, and parents, in an attempt flee back to the world of rules and consequences, turn their grief outward where it mutates into blame.

But "The Sweet Hereafter" is more than an examination of grief and culpability. The novel investigates the communities that arise when anger and blame are the primary means of social currency. By the end of the book we find ourselves within questions much larger than the individual lives involved, and though we are sad that two characters must be martyred, we are relieved, because we know that martyrs couldn't exist without the morality we thought we'd lost. Even the martyrs find can solace in an understanding their of roles: they are proof of redemption.

Four people are now fatally linked by this tragedy:

We experience the accident first hand through the eyes of the bus driver, Dolores Driscoll. Banks lets us peek into her psyche as she contemplates her part in the accident. She questions herself and is quite willing to accept her fate, yet she lacks the courage to declare her innocence.

Behind the bus at the time of the accident is Billy Ansel, a Marine Vietnam veteran. He not only witnesses the crash but also the deaths of his two children, the only thing he had to live for. We delve into his mind and explore his thoughts and feelings. Billy Ansel has a tragic story of his own: once a war hero, now little more than broken man with a heart of stone. Ansel becomes a mentor for Nichole Burnell, and though he is a tragic hero gone to alcoholism we can not help but admire his morals that help inspire Nichole Burnell to rebel against parasitic lawyer types.

Mitchell Stephens is one of those big city lawyers that plagues Sam Dent in a time of tragedy. Banks allows us to see that he is not just one of those big city lawyers, Mitchell Stephens is a human as well. We experience life through his eyes, and we learn that even a lawyer has his own morals.

Nichole Burnell is the queen of her class. Her destiny to become a rising star is given a violent turn as she is maimed by the accident. The heroine of the story comes to terms with herself and other darker conflicts of her past; and by doing this she is able to save the town from itself.

Russell Banks has allowed us to experience the strife created in a small town. This could of happened to anybody in any town. His characters could of been us or they could of been somebody we know-- that is how realistically he portrays them. The story is so realistic you must remind yourself that you got this book from the FICTION section of the bookstore. And by reading this we realize that there is no such thing as a villain in true life, just people trying to make their way in the world.