Annie Brown, a 37-year-old mother of four, drops dead of an aneurysm on her kitchen floor one early winter evening. She is probably gone before the medics arrive and take her body to the hospital. While her life is over, her husband, children and best friend are starting a new life, one they never imagined and certainly don’t want --- a life after Annie.

The shock of this loss hits them all differently, and the aftermath sorts itself into the distinct journeys of those who loved her. Thirteen-year-old Ali predictably tries to take on more responsibility as her father, Bill, falls apart. Benjy and Jamie are young enough to be firmly rooted in the present, still picking at the bacon on their meatloaf as the medics roll their mother out. But Ant (short for Anthony) is already in the throes of early puberty, and his grieving is harsh and withdrawn.

"Anyone who has lost someone precious will relate to these characters’ grief, heartbreak and ultimate resilience. It is a trip on a road paved with pathos, but it is one well worth taking."

Equally hard hit is Annemarie, Annie’s best friend. (If I have one issue with AFTER ANNIE, it’s that most of the main characters’ names start with “A.”) They had known each other since girlhood, and Annie was instrumental in getting Annemarie off opioids: “Every once in a while, when they’d cracked the second bottle of wine, they’d hold up their glasses and Annemarie would say, ‘To the year we turned twenty-three. You peed on a stick, and I got my wisdom teeth out. You had a baby, and I had a problem.’” Can Annemarie stay clean without her tough-love friend to keep her there?

Time passes, as it must. The novel is cleverly divided into sections that mark the seasons as they roll by, until a year has passed. Healing doesn’t happen fast or in a straight line. Anna Quindlen puts us in the heads and hearts of these characters. We feel their confusion and grief and, ultimately, moments of peace and hope. As we get to know them, we also get to know Annie, belatedly, through their memories.

“Sometimes, when it was warmer weather and they’d been up late for the church fair or a barbeque, she would take them outside and make them look up. ‘It’s the same moon over us all,” she said, ‘no matter where we go.’” Bill worries: “Now that she was a ghost, would she know the things he’d tried to keep from her? Would she know that he’d never wanted to get married in the beginning, that he thought four was at least two kids too many, that sometimes his favorite place to be was in his van, alone?” Quindlen explores every nuance of grief, including guilt: “And getting out from under it felt like forgetting, and forgetting felt like treason.”

As in each of Quindlen’s novels, humanity in all its glory and pettiness is the true subject. Anyone who has lost someone precious will relate to these characters’ grief, heartbreak and ultimate resilience. It is a trip on a road paved with pathos, but it is one well worth taking.