Based on several real life news items, 'The Sweet Hereafter' begins in a snowstorm with a school bus descending a hill in the fictional town of Sam Dent in upstate New York. When the bus swerves, smashing through a guard rail and plunging into a sandpit filled with icy water, fourteen of the thirty-four children in the bus are killed...the author's sympathetic imaginings of the event following the accident are so skillful and complex that one is compelled to continue. An ostensibly modern story about road accidents and litigations that turns out to be a fable, raising ancient and still troubling doubts about the viability of human society.
