What Comes After

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by Steve Watkins


  Thanks especially to my editor, Kaylan Adair, who could not possibly have done more for a story and its author. I am forever grateful for her kindness and support — and for her fierce and loving pen.

  Finally, thanks to a girl whose name I don’t know but who inspired this book, and who has had to go through a lot more in life than anyone ever should. I pray that she has found her own goat family, her Mr. and Mrs. Tuten, her Mr. DiDio, her Littleberry and Dr. Herriot and Shirelle, and that her story turns out to be as hopeful, and full of promise, as Iris Wight’s.

  STEVE WATKINS is the author of the Golden Kite Award–winning novel Down Sand Mountain. He is also the author of both a nonfiction book and short-story collection for adults and is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. What Comes After was inspired by an article he read about a girl who was placed in foster care after an assault. “I recognized her — and others like her — through my work as an investigator and advocate in the juvenile justice system,” he says. “I knew her story deserved to be told.” Steve Watkins teaches journalism, creative writing, and Vietnam War literature at the University of Mary Washington. He also teaches Ashtanga yoga and works with the child advocacy organi zation CASA. He lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia, with his family.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2011 by Steve Watkins

  Cover photograph copyright © 2011 by iSci/iStockphoto

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  First electronic edition 2011

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Watkins, Steve, date.

  What comes after / Steve Watkins. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: When her veterinarian father dies, sixteen-year-old Iris Wight must move from Maine to North Carolina where her Aunt Sue spends Iris’s small inheritance while abusing her physically and emotionally, but the hardest to take is her mistreatment of the farm animals.

  ISBN 978-0-7636-4250-1 (hardcover)

  [1. Child abuse — Fiction. 2. Grief — Fiction. 3. Moving, Household — Fiction. 4. Domestic animals — Fiction. 5. Farm life — North Carolina — Fiction. 6. North Carolina — Fiction.]

  I. Title.

  PZ7.W

  [Fic] — dc22 2010038711

  ISBN 978-0-7636-5462-7 (electronic)

  “The Guest House” from The Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks.

  Copyright © 1995 by Coleman Barks. Reprinted by permission of Coleman Barks.

  Candlewick Press

  99 Dover Street

  Somerville, Massachusetts 02144

  visit us at www.candlewick.com

 

 

 


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