After You've Gone - by Jeffrey Lent (Paperback)

About the Book

From a hardscrabble Nova Scotia fishing town to a women's college in New York to a 1920's Europe alive with the unbuttoning of sexuality but scarred by war, "After You've Gone" is a gorgeous tale spanning several pivotal decades in American life.

Book Synopsis

After You've Gone in paperback, it is a moving, sublime love story set in the cataclysmic decades around the turn of the twentieth century. Henry Dorn has spent years building a family, but it only takes a single afternoon for it to fall apart. Abruptly widowed of 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. Before long the two have fallen into an affair of a depth and significance for which neither was prepared. But the memory of his wife 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 After You've Gone delivers a tale that beautifully charts the sweep of a life, the grim reach of a war, and the discovery--and loss--of life-defining love

Review Quotes

"All the wonders of the heart and mind are in [Lent's] new 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"
"I had a curious and fascinating experience with Jeffrey Lent's "After You've Gone," I read it three months ago and then let it slip in and out of my consciousness without beckoning it. Like all good novels, "After You've Gone" will become part of your life. The triumph is the quality of Lent's prose."--Jim Harrison
"Strong, thoughtful . . . skillfully multilayered . . . The novel's prose is . . . gorgeous."--"Kirkus Reviews"

About the Author

Jeffrey Lent is the author of In the Fall and Lost Nation, which have been translated into more than eight languages. He lives in upstate New York with his wife and two daughters.