THE NEW BOOK IS OUT!
“‘Beautiful’ is a good word to describe this book, which I will boldly call my favorite so far in 2011. Steve Watkins’ writing is transparent and sensitive, and you will fall in love with Iris….” Recent 60-Second Recap Pick of the Week! Check out the video.
“WHAT COMES AFTER is a powerful and heartwrenching YA contemporary read. Watkins slips effortlessly into Iris’ voice and gives us a gorgeously told story about both the extreme cruelty and the endurance of human nature….WHAT COMES AFTER is arguably one of the strongest contemporary reads I’ve had the pleasure of discovering this year so far.” From Steph Su Reads.
GIRLS OF SUMMER has selected WHAT COMES AFTER as one of its featured books. Recommended summer reading about and for strong girls and young women. Check it out, along with an interview I did with my fellow Candlewick author Gigi Amateau for the Girls of Summer web site.
Author interviews, characters interviews, top ten lists, reviews and more from WHAT COMES AFTER. Teen Book Scene blog tour.
Want to buy a copy? Click here.
Kindle edition available, too. And audio.
KIRKUS REVIEW
Abandoned first by her abusive mother and then by her father when he dies, 16-year-old Iris Wight is no stranger to loss. Family friends initially agree to care for her, but problems soon force Iris to leave her home in Maine to live with relatives in North Carolina. Life with her angry aunt and dangerous cousin quickly proves more than she can handle. Before Iris’ arrival, her aunt’s abusive behavior was focused on the farm animals, but as Iris begins to protest the inhumane treatment of the goats, her aunt’s cruelty shifts toward her. The violence culminates in a horrific beating that lands Iris in the hospital and her aunt and cousin in jail, leaving Iris to navigate yet another change. She must learn to wade through the foster-care system and deal with animosity at school while trying to find a way to care for her beloved goats left back at the farm. While never gratuitous, violence is pervasive; difficult scenes include one that graphically describes a goat being bludgeoned to death, which may prove to be a turn-off for some readers. Watkins displays his expertise as he creates a heroine who is broken and yet refuses to stay down. Secondary characters are equally well-developed and engaging. Beautifully written, this story is an unflinching look at the cruelty of life as well as the resilience of the human spirit. (Fiction. 14 & up)
And from the Candlewick catalog:
After her veterinarian dad dies, sixteen-year-old Iris Wight must leave her beloved Maine to live on a North Carolina farm with her hardbitten aunt and a cousin she barely knows. Iris, a vegetarian and animal lover, immediately clashes with Aunt Sue, who mistreats the livestock, spends Iris’s small inheritance, and thinks nothing of striking Iris for the smallest offense. Things come to a head when Iris sets two young goats free to save them from slaughter, and an enraged Aunt Sue orders her brutish son, Book, to beat Iris senseless – a horrific act that lands Book and his mother in jail. Sent to live with an offbeat foster family and their “dooking” ferrets, Iris must find a way to take care of the animals back at the farm, even if it means confronting Aunt Sue. Powerful and deeply moving, this compelling novel affirms the redemptive power of animals and the resilience of the human spirit.
BULLETIN FROM THE CENTER FOR CHILDREN’S BOOKS
Still reeling from the death of her veterinarian father, animal-loving Iris is sent off to live with her aunt Sue, a woman she’s never known, on a badly tended goat farm that’s been as neglected as Sue’s own son. Iris tries to work hard and stay under the radar at high school and home, but when she sets two young goats free rather than see them killed for meat, her furious aunt and cousin respond with a brutal attack that leaves her hospitalized. Subsequently placed in a foster home, Iris begins to deviate from her head-down approach, rejecting her aunt’s bitterness and anger and finding ways to tend and be tended. One of the hardest lessons for Iris to sort out is how even the best of intentions sometimes simply aren’t enough: goats die, familial love isn’t automatic, and the world (even your own mostly rotten corner of it) can’t always be saved. The fact that failure can be so wrenching even while the telling of it is, at times, breathtakingly beautiful, is to the author’s credit. Iris’ sorrow is palpable, conveyed through her own defeated narration, through the moments when she catches even herself off guard with her open vulnerability, and through the intense need with which she connects with the animals around her, certain only of their love after being burned by so many people. This is the kind of book where readers will likely literally sigh with relief when Iris finally catches a break—while there is no rainbows-and-clouds-parting happy ending for a life this hard, it is enough that she is, for the moment, loved by a few fiercely loyal allies, beginning to face her demons, and wielding a bit more control over her own life. AS
MORE REVIEWS:
Bookworking in the 21st Century
That’s Swell: Reel Swell Productions
It’s Like A Whirlwind Inside My Head
60-Second Recap Pick of the Week
Teenreads asked me to write about why I wrote WHAT COMES AFTER. Here’s that blog post:
In a way, the story of Iris Wight in WHAT COMES AFTER started several years ago when I was sitting in a juvenile and domestic relations court during an emergency removal hearing, reading an autopsy report on a little 5-year-old boy. I can’t use his real name so I’ll call him Donny. He had more than 40 pronounced contusions, two broken ribs, a broken collar bone, and a skull fracture–all in various stages of healing, indicating that he had sustained the injuries over an extended period of time. In the autopsy photos he appeared emaciated, as if he’d been starved. He also had two severe traumas to his abdomen caused by what the medical examiner said were powerful external blows. The second, and most recent, was the one that killed him.
None of us who worked on that case, which lasted two long years and led to terrible revelations about Donny and his siblings, have ever been the same. It was my job as a Court Appointed Special Advocate to investigate Donny’s story, and the stories of his brothers and sisters, and to write a narrative that would bring those children to life for the judge presiding over the case–and, in a way, to bring Donny back to life, if only in my report, and if only for a little while, and if only for the court. None of us doubted that the surviving children would be scarred by what happened to them, but thanks to the love and dedication of a lot of people involved in the case—therapists, attorneys, social workers, foster parents, teachers—Donny’s brothers and sisters ended up with families who loved them and promised to take care of them. They had a chance–at least a chance–to recover, and grow up safe, and live meaningful lives.
When I read an article an couple of years ago in our local newspaper about a girl who had been badly beaten by her cousin, on orders from her guardian aunt, I was struck by how few details there were about the girl—though that is usual in the case of underage victims, who are rarely identified to the public by police or prosecutors. The article didn’t say what her life had been like before she was beaten, or what happened to her after, except for this one sentence: “The girl is now in foster care.” The more I thought about that girl and what happened to her, though, the more I felt drawn to tell her story, too—as I imagined it, for a wider audience than the court. I knew she wasn’t just another foster care kid, and she wasn’t just another victim. She must have had a life, and a story worth telling. All children do.
And then there’s this guest post for the TeensReadToo Book Club (posted in 2010 when WHAT COMES AFTER was still titled GOAT GIRL).