In The After

"Love stories cannot have a happy ending."

Jill has believed this since she was sixteen years old. Raised by grandparents who gave her everything while her mother took what she could and disappeared, she learned early that love was a wound waiting to happen. She built her life carefully - good job, good friends, walls thick enough to keep everyone at a comfortable distance.

When her grandparents announce they are leaving the only home Jill has ever known, she comes home to help them pack. What she finds in the attic changes everything - a cedar chest, a wedding dress, and a stack of diaries belonging to her grandmother Helen.

As Jill reads Helen's words - a young woman in 1948 falling in love, building a life, surviving losses she never spoke of - she begins to question everything she thought she knew about love, family, and what it means to heal.

Warm, honest, and deeply felt, In the After is a story about inherited wounds, chosen family, and the moment you finally decide that your story deserves a different ending than the one you always feared.

For readers who loved Educated, Crying in H Mart, and Where the Crawdads Sing.