From Publishers Weekly
A daughter and her father navigate the year that follows September 11, revealing secrets and healing old wounds in this slightly higher-brow Nicholas Sparksian melodrama. Single mother Cat searches for the orphaned child of her brother, Kyle, after Kyle died on 9/11 in one of the towers. Turns out Kyle had confessed to Cat the night before that he believes he is a father, and that the child's mother worked in the World Trade Center. A year after the attack and with no orphan located, Cat's father, Sam, a widowed former military man dying of heart disease, invites Cat to join him in marking the anniversary of Kyle's death. Both Cat and Sam embark on emotional journeys toward each other and reconciliation, and along the way they each find love. The numerous sappy passages don't do any favors for a book with an already maudlin premise. (June)
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Review
Praise for Scott Lasser’s The Year that Follows
“Scott Lasser’s succinct writing underscores the quiet emotional intensity of The Year That Followshis tender novel about the powerful, complicated ties of family. . . . A moving but remarkably unsentimental story.”
—Diane White, _Boston Sunday Globe
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“There are few books this reviewer is compelled to finish in one sitting, and this was one of them.”
—Henry Bankhead, _Library Journal
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“Getting to know Lasser’s complex and affecting characters is a profound pleasure, as is his radiant understanding of intimate relationships between parents and children and men and women. The strong, sure current of his magnetizing prose delivers one stunning revelation after another in this sinuous tale of biology-leaping familial connections. Every rinsed-clear sentence carries the unbearable tension of fear-laced hope as Cat struggles toward forgiveness and love, and Sam accepts the painful but affirming collision of loss and joy. ”
—Donna Seaman,_ Booklist _(starred review)
“A taut, masterfully controlled and profoundly moving novel. . . . A novel with barely a wasted word or an emotion that doesn’t ring true.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“I couldn’t put Scott Lasser’s The Year that Follows down. The characters were vivid, and the drama moving. One of the great gifts of the book is that it brings to life a haunting story in a way that is thoroughly uplifting. One of the best novels about loss I’ve ever read.”
—Anita Shreve, author of _Testimony and The Pilot’s Wife
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“_The Year that Follows_ introduces readers to a cast of flawed, good people struggling to mine meaning from the tragic loss of 9/11 as, step by tentative step, they move toward an altered future. Scott Lasser’s life affirming novel is stirring, poignant, and quietly profound.”
—Wally Lamb, author of _The Hour I First Believed
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