In the Aftermath: Cover Reveal

Hello, cover!

Say hello to the cover of my forthcoming novel, In the Aftermath (She Writes Press; releases September 21, 2021, available for pre-order). Now, let me tell you the story behind the heron.

In 2014, I began a book called The Welcome Home and brought (what was at the time) the first chapter to the Yale Writers’ Conference that June for workshopping. Those few thousand words got some good feedback as well as some helpful guidance about a plot point that I felt would become unwieldy. I had plotted that one of my characters would pick up and vanish, leaving his family behind, but the most cursory research revealed that, between cell phone tracking and traffic cameras and other trappings of our highly monitored 21st century lives, it’s hard to simply walk out of a life and disappear. I came away from Yale knowing I had to rethink David’s disappearance rather than get bogged down in the minutiae involved in changing an identity. But I was encouraged to keep going. I gave the book a new Big Event and a new title, and from there, I took the story in new directions. 

I also took the story with me to Nyon, Switzerland when we moved there in 2015. My expat days in a French-speaking canton among people who were not naturally inviting consisted largely of holing up on the Rue de Rive to write this book and long dog walks around town and throughout the surrounding countryside. Outsider status had its advantages. Being left alone meant I might finish this book. It also meant I could explore my new home without interruption. 

For many of the very early morning explorations, the dogs and I found ourselves on Nyon’s stretch of Lake Geneva, captivated by all the water birds, but especially by the stillness of a solitary gray heron who traveled around to perch on any one of the several rock jetties scattered along the lake’s edge. Drawn by how self-contained he seemed, I began to look for him on walks and felt satisfied on the days I spotted him. When I didn’t see him, I daydreamed about him. I felt he was trying to tell me something.

I’m convinced it was this heightened awareness of the gray heron on the lake that made me stop cold during one of my dog walks to stare at the sign hanging over the Benu pharmacy on the Avenue Perdtemps. On the green cross that advertised the shop’s purpose was a company logo: a stylized, tufted bird that looked an awful lot like a heron.

Curious about the company’s unusual name and especially its logo that reminded me so much of my feathered lake friend, I went right to the internet when we got home to google “Benu.” The first hit was the parent company’s website where I read their corporate philosophy: 

“The ‘benu’ in our name refers to the purple heron. In ancient Egyptian mythology, the benu—the historical predecessor of the phoenix revered in ancient Greece—returns each year, reborn, from its winter home.” 

 A deeper dive into this Egyptian tale of the Benu led me to an illustrated children’s book called Cry of the Benu Bird by C. Shana Greger. In it, Shana’s gorgeous illustrations and retelling of the myth confirmed for me the parallels between the legend of the Benu, a bird reborn with the seasons, and that of the Phoenix—the bird that dies over and over, exploding into flame only to be reborn for a new generation.  

—————

What I think now is that Lake Geneva’s heron was telling me I needed to include in the novel a creature very much like him who might symbolize this idea of renewal and remaking life after death. And so I did. A heron-like bird makes a late appearance in the book when it flies by David, who is standing on a beach during a stormy April morning with only his tortured thoughts for company.

In the book, I write about the bird’s sudden entrance like this:

 “A new, rushing noise fills his ears, growing steadier and more insistent. He feels something rush past, and he opens his eyes once more. A large bird, pewter colored under the dull sky, pushes by, large wings beating, pressing down on the air to make progress.”

I received many cover samples from my publisher—all of them beautiful—but it was this cover that captured that bird on the beach with David and, ultimately, the essence of what it means to be in the aftermath of something life altering. When I look at it, I can hear the large bird’s wings as David does, hear it making flight through the storm, through the thick clouds that eventually break to let light in, and straight into the hopeful blue skies ahead. 

“My” gray heron

IN THE AFTERMATH is available for pre-order now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.