The first months of the 2020s have brought us excellent books by Latino authors. One is Marcelo Hernandez Castillo's memoir, Children of the Land. Another is Afterlife, Julia Alvarez's first novel for adults in over a decade. It couldn't be more timely, a moving portrait of a retired English professor and novelist dealing with her husband's sudden death and the plight of fellow Latinos in her Vermont town.

Antonia Vega is still reeling a year after the death of her husband, Sam, a beloved local doctor. Since then, she has been so adrift that she sometimes pours orange juice into her coffee. Ever the novelist, she often quotes favorite authors, from Wallace Stevens to Shakespeare, to help her cope.

Family and neighborhood events complicate Antonia's grief. As Alvarez has done so beautifully in previous books, she offers a memorable portrait of sisterhood, as Antonia is one of four sisters who emigrated years ago from the Dominican Republic. 

The oldest sister and a former therapist, Izzy has been known to engage in irregular behavior, as when she wrote to Michelle Obama "to offer to design her inauguration gown." Her latest escapade is more consequential: She gets lost on the drive to Antonia's 66th birthday party, and the other sisters, including Tilly and fellow therapist Mona, frantically search for her.

In a parallel story, a man named Mario, one of several undocumented Mexicans who work at the dairy farm next to Antonia's house, asks her to help him bring his girlfriend to Vermont. But he doesn't tell Antonia the whole truth about their situation. The withheld information leads to complications neither he nor Antonia could have anticipated.

In one moving scene after another, Alvarez dramatizes the sustaining power of stories, whether for immigrants in search of a better life or for widows surviving a spouse's death. True to its title, Afterlife cannily explores what it means to go on after a loss. As Alvarez writes about Antonia, "The only way not to let the people she loves die forever is to embody what she loved about them." This is a beautiful book.

A story about sisters and undocumented immigrants, Julia Alvarez's Afterlife evokes the loneliness of grief.

A recent retiree and a writer, Antonia is coping with the loss of her husband. She's also helping a young Mexican immigrant bring his girlfriend, Estela, to the US. Then Antonia's oldest sister, Izzy, goes missing.

Antonia's younger sisters believe that Izzy is bipolar; she'd put a down payment on a motel, hoping to start an artists' commune, before she disappeared. Antonia is pulled back and forth across the country, searching for Izzy. Then Estela shows up at her doorstep, pregnant with a different man's child.

In this whirlwind of events, Antonia has little time to process the loss of her husband. Her grieving process becomes lonely as her friends and family are distracted by their own worries. Her dramatic sisters try and fail to empathize with her; they guilt her into joining their frantic search for Izzy. Their interactions are a comedic reprieve from Antonia's stress and sorrow; they bicker through increasingly bizarre events.

Realistic, well-incorporated instances of unconscious racism are interjected by those who mean well. A police officer assumes that Antonia, whose background is Dominican, is Mexican because of her appearance; he warns her about an upcoming ICE raid, though, hoping to protect Estela.

Within this inquisitive novel, which balances its humor with emotional exposition and dramatic tension, Antonia spends much time in her head: contemplating her approaches to her sisters' and Estela's problems; quoting literature. Her husband's afterlife is in her mind; she speaks to him often, wondering what he would do or say in the heart-wrenching circumstances that she faces.

In the hopeful novel Afterlife, a widow is pulled in many directions, including into a fight over immigration issues.

Immigrant writer Antonia Vega was looking forward to retirement from her college professorship, but her husband has died unexpectedly. Then her generous if rocky sister disappears, the undocumented migrant teenager who's come her way happens to be pregnant, and Antonia's beloved books aren't giving her answers now. From the author of In the Time of the Butterflies, a Big Reads selection that has sold over a million copies in print; with a 100,000-copy first printing and a ten-city tour.

In this return to adult fiction by Alvarez (How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents), a retired English professor and writer is caught between her sisters' drama and the plight of a pregnant undocumented young women—all in the wake of her husband's death. Antonia Vega is still grieving for Sam a year after his fatal car accident, getting by with the help of aphorisms from her favorite poets. When eldest sister, Izzy, disappears during a manic episode, her Dominican sisterhood convenes, bringing along their usual baggage. Meanwhile, a documented worker from the neighboring farm seeks Antonia's help in finding a place for his pregnant girlfriend. Antonia navigates these tumultuous occurrences with Sam and what he would do as her guiding principle. In this life after his death, the protagonist realizes that the best way to memorialize her husband is to embody what she loved most about him. Alvarez's prose is magnetic as she delves into the intricacies of sisterhood, immigration, and grief, once again proving her mastery as a storyteller. This stirring novel reminds readers that actions (big and small) have a lasting impact—so they should always act with love. VERDICT An incisive book that will burrow itself into people's hearts and stay long after they've turned the last page. [See Prepub Alert, 10/7/19.]—Shelley M. Diaz, BookOps, New York P.L. & Brooklyn P.L.

Alvarez's poignant return to adult fiction (after the young adult Tia Lola series) raises powerful questions about the care people owe themselves and others. Antonia Vega is reeling from the sudden death of her husband, Sam, who suffered an aneurysm on the day they'd planned to celebrate her retirement. As an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, Antonia is determined to embrace American values of self-preservation and independence, and she keeps a running dialogue in her head with Sam about the U.S. and D.R.'s conflicting values ("We live in America, she reminds the disapproving Sam in her head, where you put your oxygen mask on first"). This outlook is challenged after she finds an undocumented and pregnant teenage girl from Mexico hiding in her garage, and when Antonia's charismatic but unstable older sister Izzy disappears. As Antonia weighs the needs of others and her own, memories of Sam's magnanimity and generosity of spirit guide her, along with sentiments from authors such as Tolstoy ("What is the right thing to do?") and Rilke ("You must change your life"). Alvarez blends light humor with deep empathy toward her characters, offering a convincing portrait of an older woman's self discovery. This will satisfy her fans and earn new ones. (Apr.)