The afterpains
(Book)

"Gorgeous and perceptive, The Afterpains is a heartbreaking portrait of two families trying to cope with grief, isolation, and living far from one's homeland--told in the voices of four distinct narrators. Twenty years after the death of her infant daughter, Rosy still feels--acutely--all that she's lost. But she's determined to try to lay her grief to rest, desperate to repair the connections to the family she does have: her husband, Desmond, and her nineteen-year-old son, Eddie. At the same time, Isaura is shattered after learning that her teenage daughter, Mivi, is pregnant. Haunted by a centuries-long curse with roots in her homeland of Honduras, a curse which has subjected all the young women in Isaura's family to teenage motherhood and the untimely death of the men they loved, Isaura is devastated to find out that her daughter, even after moving thousands of miles away from Pespire to Toronto, has still not been spared. Soon, Rosy and Isaura, essentially strangers, become connected in a way neither of them could predict. As they try to look to the future, both theirs and their children's, they struggle to put the past behind them--all while Eddie and Mivi contend with the weight of their mothers' pain and guilt. Tender and compassionate, The Afterpains is a moving debut novel on motherhood, grief, identity, and belonging."--,Provided by publisher.

Issued also in electronic format.