Ever After

First time in paperback, the gripping, heartbreaking account of a father's grief and search for justice. On August 3, 1988, heavy black smoke engulfed an Oregon highway, causing a massive 23 car pile-up that claimed the lives of novelist William Wharton's thirty-six year-old daughter, Kate, her husband, Burt, and their two infant daughters. Victims of field burning, a routine agricultural practice that continues to this day, they were incinerated alive in their van. How could this be allowed to happen? And how can one ever come to terms with such a loss? In Ever After, William Wharton searches for the answers to these questions. This, his first work of nonfiction, is a gripping account of a father's grief and relentless pursuit of justice. Writing with the inspired simplicity that has won him great acclaim, he evokes the voices and thoughts of his loved ones?the living and the dead?to reconstruct and reckon with the events that changed his life forever. Kate comes to us through her own voice, as she grows into womanhood, falls in love, and raises her babies. And then, Wharton speaks for himself of the tragedy and anguish of those who are left behind. His pain is unbearable until three days after their deaths, Kate, Burt, and their daughters visit him in a dream. As though in a passage to the afterlife, Burt tells him to fight field burning, so the horror will never happen again. Wharton is compelled by this vision to take on the system. And before he is through, he and his family will have been through a different kind of hell: the investigations, the lawyers, the judges, the insurance claims, the media, the compromises, and the deals. And they will have drawn on resources they never knew they had. Ever After is a story of individual courage and collective cowardice; of one man's rage against death, and spiritual renewal. REVIEWS: "Wharton writes with the skills of a born storyteller...Wharton's 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. " Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) "A piercing cry from the heart, a resounding call for reform?and that rare thing: a unique book. " Kirkus Reviews "William Wharton's search for meaning in personal tragedy is harrowing, courageous, and extraordinarily moving." Hilma Wolitzer, author of Tunnel of Love