From the recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award, the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Rea Award for the Short Story: a gorgeously rendered, passionate account of a relationship threatened by secrets, set against the backdrop of national tragedy.
When Natasha, a talented young artist working as a congressional aide, meets Michael Faulk, an Episcopalian priest struggling with his faith, the stars seem to align. Although he is nearly two decades older, they discover in each other the happy yearning and exhilaration of lovers, and within months they are engaged. Shortly before their wedding, while Natasha is vacationing in Jamaica and Faulk is in New York attending the wedding of a family friend, the terrorist attacks of September 11 shatter the tranquillity of the nation's summer. Alone in a state of abject terror, cut off from America and convinced that Faulk is dead, Natasha makes an error in judgment that leads to a private trauma of her own on the Caribbean shore. A few days later, she and Faulk are reunited, but the horror of that day and Natasha's inability to speak of it inexorably divide their relationship into "before" and "after." They move to Memphis and begin their new life together, but their marriage quickly descends into repression, anxiety, and suspicion.
In prose that is direct, exact, and lyrical, Richard Bausch plumbs the complexities of public and personal trauma, and the courage with which we learn to face them. Above all, Before, During, After is a love story, offering a penetrating and exquisite portrait of intimacy, of spiritual and physical longing, and of the secrets we convince ourselves to keep even as they threaten to destroy us. An unforgettable tour de force from one of America's most distinguished storytellers.
Industry Reviews
"A brilliant blend of tragedy and romance." --San Francisco Chronicle "Elegantly constructed. . . . One of Richard Bausch's many talents is the forthright ease with which he delivers his characters--and readers--to the gravest questions of love, faith and ultimately God, even as he nimbly hides the answers in plain sight." --The New York Times Book Review
"Intimate. . . . Bausch explores the way private tragedy is distorted and subsumed by national disaster." --The Washington Post
"An intensely personal drama. . . . As he empathetically investigates his characters, Bausch uncovers thoughts and feelings as tangled and troubled as the world around them." --The Boston Globe
"[A] terrific novel. . . . Bausch has found a way to connect the optimism that died [on 9/11] with the hopes and dreams that we take into our intimate relationships. They can collapse, too. And often we don't even see it coming. . . . [He is] a master storyteller who appreciates subtleties most of us can't see, much less write." --The Seattle Times
"Masterful prose, in the service of a masterfully told story. . . . [Before, During, After] would have been over-reach for a lesser writer, but Bausch pulls it off by displaying the utmost care for his characters, employing the highest form of authorial omnipotence to show how external horrors reverberate in internal spaces." --The Daily Beast
"A quietly lovely book, well-written and sad, but with the possibility of triumph." --The Post and Courier (Charleston)
"Gripping." --Toronto Star
"Skillfully crafted. . . . Taut and restrained. . . . Bausch is a powerful evocator. . . . [He] courageously tackles a difficult conundrum in fiction: how to fictionalize--that is how to make art--out of unspeakable evil taken from life." --New York Journal of Books
"Sublimely probing what it means to lose trust in one's self and in those one loves, the masterful Bausch delicately ponders the consequences of devastating loss on both a grand and personal scale. A luscious, sweeping heartbreak of a novel." --Booklist (starred review)
"Bausch offers a twentieth work of fiction that blends private and public trauma to devastating effect." --Library Journal
