After You

On a tree-lined street in affluent Notting Hill brilliant beautiful Lucy Stafford was murdered in broad daylight while walking her 8-year-old daughter Sophie to school. Stunned Lucy's best friend Ellie Lerner boards a plane to London for the funeral leaving her husband Phillip behind knowing only that she must spend time with her goddaughter. The little girl is in shock and refuses to speak while her father Greg withdraws into his own very private grief. Instinctively Ellie reaches for the classic book that gave her so much comfort when she was a child - The Secret Garden. As Ellie reads the weeks pass and gradually the child begins to thaw. It is then that Ellie realizes she too has issues of her own that she must finally come to terms with: the still birth of her child her true feelings for her husband and a revelation about Lucy herself which sets Ellie reeling.Filled with the loving and eccentric characters that made The Opposite of Love such a success with wisdom far beyond her years Julie Buxbaum has written a novel that explores the resilience of the heart and the ability for books to reawaken the spirit.