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Grove's description of After You've Gone
The brave portrayal of a man finding hope in the midst of life-changing tragedy, After You’ve Gone has been hailed as “truly an emotional journey” (Star-Tribune, Minneapolis). Now in paperback, it is a moving, sublime love story set in the cataclysmic decades around the turn of the twentieth century and spanning Nova Scotia, New York, and Amsterdam. Henry Dorn has spent years building a family, but it only takes a single afternoon for it to fall apart. Abruptly widowed of Olivia, the love of his life, Henry buys a steamer ticket for Amsterdam, the city of his heritage, hoping to start life anew. But nothing could have prepared him for the woman he meets on the ship: the fiery, self-sufficient Lydia Pearce, one of a new generation of women. At first Henry does not know what to make of Lydia, but before long the two have fallen into an affair of a depth and significance for which neither was prepared. And just as quickly as he was robbed of his wife, Henry is faced with the possibility of new beginnings. But the memory of the woman he fell for in the first blush of youth, and the vexed relationship he had with their son, haunt Henry in the midst of his new beginning. Jeffrey Lent is one of our finest novelists and in After You’ve Gone he has delivered a masterpiece: a gorgeous tale that encompasses several pivotal decades in American life and beautifully charts the sweep of a life, the grim reach of a war, and the discovery—and loss—of life-defining love. |
Praise for After You've Gone:
“Truly beautiful . . . The redemptive power of love has filled many a bookshelf. What sets After You’ve Gone apart is the risks it takes.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“Jeffrey Lent . . . is a warrior of a writer, wrestling with themes like history and love. . . . His writing . . . towers over most anything else in contemporary American literature.”
—The Chronicle Herald (Canada)
“All the wonders of the heart and mind are in [this] novel. With unequalled skill and sensitivity, Jeffrey Lent offers us a profound understanding of the how and why we get through our good days and our bad days.”
—Edward P. Jones, author of The Known World
“Lent . . . writes elegant, gorgeous prose. . . . It is a pleasure to surrender to the beauty of the storytelling, to succumb to the force of Lent’s elegiac prose and the lingering effects of this haunting novel.”
—BookPage
“Intricate and rewarding . . . A closeup view of the loss of innocence of a person and a world . . . [a] vivid depiction of the era. It’s a nice contrast to the aimless youngsters often associated with the lost generation canon.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Truly beautiful . . . The redemptive power of love has filled many a bookshelf. What sets After You’ve Gone apart is the risks it takes.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“Jeffrey Lent . . . is a warrior of a writer, wrestling with themes like history and love. . . . His writing . . . towers over most anything else in contemporary American literature.”
—The Chronicle Herald (Canada)
“All the wonders of the heart and mind are in [this] novel. With unequalled skill and sensitivity, Jeffrey Lent offers us a profound understanding of the how and why we get through our good days and our bad days.”
—Edward P. Jones, author of The Known World
“Lent . . . writes elegant, gorgeous prose. . . . It is a pleasure to surrender to the beauty of the storytelling, to succumb to the force of Lent’s elegiac prose and the lingering effects of this haunting novel.”
—BookPage
“Intricate and rewarding . . . A closeup view of the loss of innocence of a person and a world . . . [a] vivid depiction of the era. It’s a nice contrast to the aimless youngsters often associated with the lost generation canon.”
—Publishers Weekly