THE AFTERPAINS

Gorgeous and perceptive, The Afterpains is a heartbreaking portrait of two families trying to cope with grief, isolation, and living far from one's homeland—told in the voices of four distinct narrators.

Twenty years after the death of her infant daughter, Rosy still feels—acutely—all that she's lost. Desperate to repair the connections to the family she does have: her husband, Desmond, and her nineteen-year-old-son, Eddie—she's determined to lay her grief to rest. At the same time, Isaura is shattered after learning that her teenage daughter, Mivi, is pregnant. For centuries in her homeland of Honduras, the young women in Isaura's family have been subjected to a curse of teenage motherhood and the untimely death of the men they loved. Isaura is devastated to find out that her daughter, even after moving thousands of miles away from Pespire to Toronto, has still not been spared.

Soon, Rosy and Isaura, essentially strangers, become connected in a way neither of them could predict. As they try to look to the future and their children's, they struggle to put the past behind them—all while Eddie and Mivi contend with the weight of their mothers' pain and guilt.

Tender and compassionate, The Afterpains is a moving debut novel on motherhood, grief, identity, and belonging.
Anna Julia Stainsby is a Honduran-Canadian writer from Toronto. She is a recent graduate of the University of Toronto's MA in English in the Field of Creative Writing and currently lives in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Literary Review of Canada, FreeFall Magazine, FLARE, Lake Effect 8, and has been supported by the Toronto Arts Council as well as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.