In Donora, Pennsylvania the mills are churning ugly smoke in the fall of 1948. Community nurse Rose Pavlesic is a tough cookie– wrangling her patients, family and life into shape with sheer will. Suddenly the time comes when everything is called into question. Her community nurse program lacks funding, her children’s lives are spiraling out of her control, and her husband…she can’t even think about everything wrong with their relationship as she juggles the well-being of the entire town. Her one hope for funding circles around the Superintendent’s family. The secrets of her past come to haunt her and blacken her vision like the fog coating the town.
Rose is an amazing character. Any modern woman would admire the way she uses every moment in the day. From making breakfast, picking up the chores her family neglects to do, watching her nephew, visiting four families before lunch, saving money bill by bill, straight to coming home to dust a second time, and putting dinner on the table. How does she do it? Why by being really friggin stressed and a bit bitter than no one else ever gives her a hand.
Things come to a head quickly in this book as everything starts to crumble on Rose. She’s tough, but there are things that can make anyone curl up into a little ball. After the Fog has great pacing, bit by bit the characters reveal shameful acts and sordid pasts. Kathleen Shoop sure packs a lot of action into a week’s time. A few typographical errors, an unexplained shift in perspective and a couple of spots I couldn’t help but skim are what kept this book from rating higher. Overall I couldn’t stop reading, and found some serious tears in my eyes. Read this book!
After the Fog
Kathleen Shoop’s Website
