History teacher, Irving Cruikshank, has recently lost his wife, Helen, to cancer. He is trying to cope by going back to his normal routine and bottling his grief inside. This isn’t going to work. He has a sixteen year old daughter, Severn, who is coping by acting out. When she runs away to the big city of Toronto, Irving has a suspicion of who she is going to meet; his nemesis the celebrated author Jack Livingston. Has she figured out one of the big secrets behind Irving and Helen’s marriage?

With the unlikely help of Marla, the mother of the young man Severn coerced into driving her to Toronto, Irving looks for his daughter. As the search goes forward Irving’s thoughts stray back revealing his history with Helen. Interwoven through the narrative is the story of the lost Franklin expedition, an obsession of Irving’s – he is a history teacher after all and the lost Franklin expedition is part of the Canadian mythology. Then too Lady Franklin’s obsession with her husband’s good name has echoes in the story of Helen and Irving.

After Helen is a story about loss and redemption and the compromises made for love in all its disguises. For we are left to make our peace with the way things are, not with how we would prefer them to be.

http://books.moonsoar.com/archives/2008/03/13/after-helen/ ( )