Lost in Vermont: Afterlife by Julia Alvarez

This engaging and thoughtful work is the latest from the novelist Julia Alvarez, who came to the United States from the Dominican Republic when she was a young girl, and ultimately became a professor of English and the recipient of many honors for her work, including the National Medal of the Arts.

The character at the heart of the story is Antonia, a recently retired English professor in rural Vermont, a Latina from, yes, the Dominican Republic. Her husband, Sam, has just passed away and she is working painfully through her profound grief. She is one of four very close sisters, one of whom, Felicia, nicknamed Izzy, tends to go from crisis to crisis.

Her closest neighbor is a farmer who depends on the labor of undocumented Mexican immigrants, one of whom is sent over to help Antonia with some chores that her late husband would normally have done. Somehow, Antonia becomes embroiled in the life of the worker, Mario, and his fiancé, Estela, who is trying to follow him from Mexico, but has run into trouble with the unscrupulous coyote who is managing her journey across the border and beyond.

Meanwhile, Antonia and two of her sisters become alarmed when things escalate with Izzy, and they must find a way to intervene in a fraught situation.

Antonia feels overwhelmed by so much emotional turmoil as she deals with her own loss, but it feels as though the stresses just keep mounting. Despite them all, she makes her way.

Antonia's story is told with insight, sensitivity, and ironic humor. It is the story of a woman with a rich intellectual and emotional internal life who must confront external situations she doesn't want to own, and find a path to navigate through so she can make peace with herself.

It's quite a rare and refreshing thing to encounter a novel about the inner life and challenges of a woman who is no longer young – as it so often seems in real life, women beyond the age of their peak attractiveness or the travails of young(ish) motherhood seem to disappear and become almost anonymous non-entities in our society. There are plenty of us that no one seems to see, so we are not often the heroines of novels. Too bad, as our experience gives us plenty to say.