After the War | eBook

A morally rigorous American “blockbuster” (San Francisco Chronicle) about survival, aftermath, and the quiet violence history leaves behind.

In the aftermath of World War II, Paul Alexander arrives in a small Tennessee town carrying scars no one can see. The town, too, bears its own marks, obsessed with the past and divided into two factions: those supporting the building of a railroad foundry and those championing an earlier, more agrarian era.

At first, the rhythms of Southern life feel merely unfamiliar: the slow pace of days, the surface politeness, the unspoken hierarchies that govern every exchange. But as Paul is drawn deeper into the lives around him—all while grappling with an unhappy marriage—he begins to sense that something unresolved is pressing just beneath the surface.

The war, he realizes, has not ended. What unfolds is a slow-burning racial and economic reckoning, a town’s fragile equilibrium giving way under the weight of a secret it has long refused to confront. When violence finally erupts, it arrives with both shocking force and grim inevitability.