After Paradise

Fiction. An exquisite novel in the classic mode: love, tragedy, small-town America. AFTER PARADISE takes its rightful place alongside Mrs. Bridge, Winesburg, Ohio and The Stories of John Cheever in shining a light on American joy and American sorrow.–T. C. Boyle

From the very first page, as a traveling carnival sets up in the small Maine town of Scoggin, you know you are in for something exceptional. Robley Wilson has a rare gift for capturing place and creating achingly real characters: David, on the cusp of adulthood, lit with desire and chafing against a cruel father; Kate, his clever, strong willed almost-girlfriend; and Sharita, an erotic dancer with a dark past, whose arrival sets in motion an explosive chain of events. Set at a time when the memory of WWII was fresh, the novel is both a vivid portrait of the past and a timeless look at relations between men and women.–Dawn Raffel

A tale of two couples, David and Kate, high school students, and Sherrie and Frank, an exotic dancer and her carnival barker, Robley Wilson’s AFTER PARADISE is a beautifully observed, passionate, and elegant unveiling of small-town life in all its claustrophobic intensity. A traveling carnival arrives in Scoggin, Maine, after World War II, setting in motion a battle between sensuality and puritanism, love and punishment that moves inevitably toward a tragic conclusion. Evocative of New England lives described long ago by Hawthorne and Wharton, and more recently by Cheever and Updike, AFTER PARADISE is a brilliantly compelling exploration, engaging from start to finish.–David Hellerstein