The After Wife

Women’s Fiction Silver Medal Winner, Reader’s Favorite Awards 2020.

A grieving widow flees Manhattan for a Nova Scotia village — and finds a handyman, a little girl, and a life she never expected.

After losing her husband, writer Abigail Carson has all but given up on life. Having spent the past year cocooned in her Manhattan apartment, she's running out of money and out of reasons to stay. So she does the only drastic thing she can think of: she moves to a tiny village in Nova Scotia, where she'll finally have no one to bother her.

She's wrong about the 'no one' part.

South Haven has other ideas. Neighbors arrive with casseroles and invitations she didn't ask for. And then there's Liam Wright — the steady, quiet handyman renovating her crumbling cottage — and his seven-year-old daughter, Olive, who has an uncanny ability to find the cracks in every wall Abby builds.

Just as the dark cloud begins to lift, Abby discovers that Liam has been carrying a secret — one that threatens to unravel everything. She must decide what she's truly made of: the woman who ran from life, or the woman South Haven has quietly been calling her to become.

Heartwarming, bittersweet, and quietly unforgettable, The After Wife is grief lit at its finest — for readers who know that the most important love stories aren't always the ones we planned. Fans of Cecelia Ahern, Jojo Moyes, and Marian Keyes will not want to miss this.

If you've ever had to learn how to be brave again, this book was written for you. Scroll up and start reading.

WHAT TO EXPECT:

Tone: Heartwarming, emotional, hopeful, bittersweet, quietly uplifting

Series Type: Standalone

Ending: Open ending — emotionally resolved, not plot-resolved

POV: Third person, single POV Content Notes: Grief, terminal illness, loss of spouse, found family — no explicit content