In the Aftermath explores the effects of tragedy on those left behind

Jane Ward keeps coming back to two loves: books and baking.

The former led to an English literature degree from Simmons University and a passion for library advocacy. The latter resulted in a career in the hospitality and food industries including employment in a downtown bakery that served everything from commuter coffee to special birthday cakes. Both converge in Ward’s career as an author whose third novel, In the Aftermath, begins with a bakery in trouble. 

“I wanted to write a book that started in 2008, the time period [of] financial downturn,” Ward says via phone from her Chicago home. Having worked in that bustling bakery in the early 2000s, she says, “I decided I would make that the focal point—of what happens to this family when they’re so heavily invested in their bakery, and the loans they’ve taken out to renovate it, and [how] everything falls apart.” 

The aftermath of the book’s title refers to Boston bakery owner David Herron, who experiences secret, overwhelming shame at the business’s financial problems and dies by suicide. In the Aftermath follows those left to deal with the repercussions of David’s final choice two years later, including his widow, Jules, who now works at the bakery she used to co-own; daughter Rennie, struggling with high school and blaming herself for David’s suicide; and former cop Denise Healey, who regrets how she handled David’s case. Meanwhile, ex-banker Daniel Hopper believes he is at fault and, as punishment, lives a lonely existence of odd jobs while relinquishing his identity: 

His full name—Daniel Fulke Hopper—had become a burden. Bad guys always seemed to have three names, and his had caught traction in the newspapers for a few weeks, associated with loan defaults and suicide….A little over a month after that encounter, he had taken only his essentials and walked away from everything else. Nothing he’d owned, nothing he and Stacy had owned together, had been worth the price of a man’s life. Maybe by denying himself a full life, he would stop hearing “Mr. Hopper” in the widow’s angry voice, repeating itself over and over on a loop, reminding him of who he was and what he’d done.

Ward initially resisted the intense topic of suicide. “I tried every other plot device I could think of,” she admits. “[I thought] maybe the main character could just run away? [But] I realized [that] in this day and age, you can’t disappear like you could 20 or 30 years ago.”

Rather than focus completely on David, however, Ward decided to chronicle the struggles of his surviving family as well as those of two other individuals involved before and after the suicide.

“I thought it was interesting to think about what happens to people in the aftermath,” she says. “People looking in on the family who have been devastated by [suicide] will talk about ‘what a selfish act,’ ‘how could they have done it?’ 

“That’s part of how we come to terms with it,” Ward acknowledges. “But I know the person who’s in it is…either drawn in by their own mental health issues or [by] a problem they just can’t solve.” In writing In the Aftermath, she says, “I wanted to go beyond the initial reaction and dig into what it means for the people involved. I think we do them a disservice if we don’t look at the issue more broadly and try to figure out what’s going on.” 

Though Ward hadn’t directly been affected by suicide when she began the novel, this changed two years later. “A friend of ours had taken his life,” she recalls. “I stopped and thought, Can I even go on with this story?” After serious consideration, Ward remembered why she wanted to write the book. “I thought there was a reason to tell this, a reason for helping people in these situations to understand and empathize.”

The characters’ struggles are often reflected in the novel’s bird imagery, which was inspired by Ward’s time living in Switzerland. After her two adult children moved out of their Cambridge, Massachusetts, home, Ward’s husband was offered a position in Geneva, and the couple relocated overseas for three years. “We were right on Lake Geneva,” Ward says of their home outside the city. “We spent a lot of time at the lake, in the countryside. I’m not a bird-watcher per se, but there were a lot of species I wasn’t used to, so I’d go home and look them up in the local bird guide.” 

One of those species was the gray heron, different from the blue herons common to the United States. Its persona both appealed to Ward and reminded her of her characters. “They’re very solitary,” she says. “[The gray heron] became this symbol to me of someone struggling by himself with things he couldn’t solve and didn’t want to talk about with the people around him.”

Kirkus gave In the Aftermath a starred review, calling the book “[a]n insightful and psychologically astute story of ordinary people moving forward after personal tragedy.” Ward is thrilled by the accolade—“I think my heart stopped beating for a minute when the starred review popped up,” she says—but isn’t resting on her laurels. She’s currently working on a novel about motherhood and, in the process, is recalling the love of literature she passed on to the next generation.

“My daughter is probably the best writer I know, [and] my son’s a good writer, too!” she says. “I always read aloud at night to both kids. We all love stories. We just love them.”

Lauren Emily Whalen is the author of four books for young adults. She lives in Chicago.