Afterlife

When a retired teacher suddenly loses her beloved husband, she has no time to truly mourn. She has three sisters who demand attention to their problems and insist on sisterly unity. She also has a hostile neighbor who uses undocumented immigrants as farmhands. With considerable reluctance, she is drawn into both events. There is a betrothed couple with the bride in the hands of a blackmailing coyote. There is an erratic sister who has bought a motel and a pack of llamas. On her way to her sister’s birthday party/sister reunion, she disappears. The sisters join together to track her down so that she can be treated for her increasing bizarreness in old age. While the beginnings of this novel hold promise, it grows tiring in the long telling. The sisters do not seem real, but perhaps that is due to the detachment and sorrow of the narrating sister. The most interesting part of the book is the unification of the sisters against the “crazy” one. In many families, one member is always the scapegoat. This reader had a wish for greater resolution to this story and felt abandoned in the last pages.