Synopsis:

"...compelling and resonant in its own time, acquiring yet another layer of relevancy."

This exclusive Traingle Classics edition celebrates Jess Wells' extraordinary 1992 novel AfterShocks, in which a circle of women and men living in San Francisco confront their deepest fears after a major earthquake. How each of them come to terms with their past, present, and future -- and learn to love and live anew -- is altogether breathtaking to witness.

In light of the disorienting events of Sept. 11, 2001, this classic now takes on a striking level of potency.  As Katherine V. Forrest notes in her new introduction to this edition, "AfterShocks is a novel written ten years ago whose time has fully come."

Book Excerpt:

AfterShocks

by Jess Wells

Arriving home to find the city of San Francisco decimated, Trout did not expect to be plagued by the desire to throw a cloth over her flat as if protecting a woman who has run naked into the street.

Dumbfounded, the nails of one hand digging into the flesh of her neck, she regarded the one-story Victorian apartment as if she were looking at something obscene.  The front of the building was a pile of lathe and plaster, seeming more to have frayed than fallen.  Slabs of sheet rock that had been her foyer lay in the street, while sections of the remaining walls hung in clumps from supporting cables, and the coveted hardwood floor, bleached no less, was covered in debris.  Only the hallway walls and a few pillars holding up the roof remained standing.The dressers were smashed, the contents of all the cupboards and closets spewed out. A coat worn inside out, she thought as she began to shake, and that could not be done. The hallway, though, (she turned, drawn to it), was only slightly disheveled, as if someone with too many drinks in them had stumbled down its length, tipping the pictures with a careless shoulder. 

This much disarray, it meant the lake was coming in on her, a canoe on its side, her father face down in the water, all the white tags of recipes and things not done piling up to her neck.  The entire house was lost.  Trout closed her eyes and put her hand deep into the mass of her wiry blonde hair, as if her hand might be capable of holding her up.  She opened her eyes and stepped over a broken door frame and a mop head.

"Patricia!" she shouted, then shuddered at the silence.

"Henry, Jack!" she screamed, frantic to find her neighbors, some assurance that everyone had gotten out safely.  Their part of the building, the back flat, was destroyed as well.  Where had they gone? Especially with Jack so sick.  Maybe he had already been in the hospital, she thought, aware that that would not have been good news on any other day.  Trout stared at the back of the building as if willing Henry to step out from behind a pillar.  What she wouldn’t give to sit and laugh with him.  Where was everyone?  Why was it so quiet?

Trout's hand reached out then pulled back, shaking, as if it could right a vase that had already fallen and smashed, or straighten a row of books that had tumbled from the shelf and lay under bits of wall and window.  She wanted to scoop everything into a big drawer, or turn around and press her back against a huge closet door that might keep it all inside. She imagined someone summarily demanding their dog get off the sofa: "Cabinet! Off the china, right now!  It couldn't be ruined, not all of it, not everything but an umbrella stand and a couple of posters.  Her breath came in shallow bursts.  Trout put her hand over her mouth, wounded by the items that had managed to stay intact, in their places, where everyday life had insisted they stay, in its silly conviction that there was nothing more important than how candlesticks were arranged or the exact positioning of a little picture on a wall. 

Where are my files? Trout wondered, turning frantically from side to side. The work in these drawers couldn't be scattered from the paperwork closet to the bathroom and the street. She couldn't even see most of them: they were buried. It would take a fork-lift, a bulldozer to get at them. These file drawers mustn't be disturbed: they worked like a clock, every bill not just on time, but three days ahead to arrive on precisely the due date, scheduled to maximize the interest on her checking account, with overdraft protection. She had fallen behind on her paperwork once before, and her father had slipped away, vanished. Not this time, though. She had exact tabs on all the folders, stationary in separate drawers and four years of tax papers, with ledger entries.             

A bile collected in her mouth and she shook her head. It couldn't be this way. Where was her little china fish? She struggled to find the remains of the bookshelf. Too precious to pack, the fish had ridden in her purse through every move, on every vacation. It was a gift from her father and now it lay crushed between volumes of books: she saw the tail and the white dust of the crushed porcelain. The end of everything had come like this before, it had happened. She had been a child, and then she had pulled some cans out of the water, rubble like this, and suddenly she had had no childhood left, she had no father. Stumbling over the shattered remains of her front wall, Trout vomited onto a pile of books.

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Topics/Categories:

ACA, AIDS, earthquakes, Intimacy, LGBT life, parenthood, San Francisco, Survival

Type of Work:

Novel

Publishers:

InsightOut Books/Bookspan

Purchase From:

Buy an autographed copy of this hard-to-find volume

Original Publish Date:

01/01/2002

ISBNs:

0-965-36778-9

Formats:

Paperback