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EVER AFTER: A FATHER'S TRUE STORY
Wharton, William
1995 1160207 From Publishers Weekly: Wharton is an award-winning novelist (Birdie; Dad; A Midnight Clear) who six years ago lost his daughter, her husband and their two babies in a multi-car highway crash in Oregon caused by smoke from nearby "field burning" that blinded the drivers. In this account, based on his knowledge of the accident and his involvement in the years of legal shenanigans that followed, Wharton writes what is in effect a documentary novel, bringing it all to harrowing life with the skills of a born storyteller. In the first chapters, he writes as daughter Kate, evoking her wandering life, her unhappy first marriage, her meeting in Germany with big, cheerful Bert from Oregon, their homecoming to his native state and the moments right up to the crash. As Will, her father, he recounts his family's vast sorrow?and there are few more wrenching accounts of grief in literature?and his determination, buoyed by a dream of the dead family, to seek redress for their deaths. Hiring an Oregon law firm, he soon runs into a wall of resistance: the field burning is seen as an economic right of the state's grass growers, despite strong local opposition, and soon the lawsuits begin to fly back and forth. Frustrated in his efforts to win a jury trial, surrounded by lawyers and friends who see cash as fair payment for life, Wharton retreats to an elegiac but wonderfully poetic conclusion. His book has the ring of emotional truth even as it reads like a grippingly dramatic novel, and its blend of sorrow and a healing anger has a bracingly cathartic effect. . Product Description: From the powerful author of Birdy, Dad, and A Midnight Clear, the acclaimed memoir about a family's tragedy, recovery, and spiritual renewal. It is the true story of the events that changed Wharton's life and gave him a belief in an afterlife--the story of the tragedy that killed his 36-year-old daughter and her family in a highway collision, told amazingly from his daughter Kate's point of view, as well as his own. Newmarket Press 1-55704-223-3 / 9781557042231
Hardcover Brand New Brand New Book Jacket New York
Price:
22.33 USD
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