Aftermath

By Anne Cameron

In this powerful, shocking and highly absorbing new work, Anne Cameron picks up a thread from her prize-winning novel Dreamspeaker, in which an eleven-year-old abuse survivor and runaway named Peter Baxter is taken from his adopted family - two reclusive Native elders - only to be destroyed by the child welfare system that supposedly exists to protect him. Cameron asks why more and more kids are at risk, in spite of official inquiries, public outcries and millions of taxpayer's dollars. She finds part of the answer in the ordinary nuclear family, presenting a technicolour nightmare of hand-me-down dysfunction spiked with the black humour reminiscent of her 1995 bestselling novel The Whole Fam Damily, and another part in the child welfare system that covers the butts of everyone except the kids.

Cousins Fran and Liz are children of parents who came from violent families, then grew up and started new violent families. By the time Fran has had a few children and a long procession of difficult fosters, she has begun to write down her family history and to realize just how deeply troubled her family is - back through who-knows-how-many generations. While Fran struggles to work out her past, Liz concentrates on her violin and music career and tries to forget her own traumatic childhood. But when Peter Baxter's tragic end hits the headlines, the story affects more people than just his family members and social workers. Everyone becomes involved, from his peers at the reform school to Fran and Liz and their families.

What's to be done? It's too late for Peter Baxter, but in the aftermath, one by one, people can stand up to the system and make a difference. Fran and Liz, who choose different ways to survive the horror of their childhoods, remain friends and allies as they repair the damage visited on their children and grandchildren. Anna Fleming, a social worker with an impossible case load, shows what caring really means. And Jackie, a kid who's never had a break, just keeps on running. Their story makes Aftermath both deeply moving and profoundly hopeful.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1550171933
• ISBN13: 9781550171938
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Harbour Publishing
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Reality check for the child welfare system

Finally an author who tells it like it is. In Aftermath, Anne Cameron writes brilliant, funny, and sometimes overwhelming social commentary on the ins and outs of abusive families and the child welfare system in Canada, and presumably, around the world. No stranger to the subject, this is one of several books Ms. Cameron has written focusing on strong matriarchs who attempt to take back control of their lives and their extended families. Set in British Columbia, the book opens with Fran and Liz growing up, and coping in their own ways with their experiences, through years of denial, bad choices, healing and moving on. Meanwhile, social worker Anna Flemming tries to cope with working in a system that works for everyone except the children who need it. This is not a feel-good book about the modern day self-help recovery culture, but a reality-based, cynically optimistic version of life for those of us who choose to move through the world without years of primal therapy and Prozac. A slice of life novel for the rest of us. This reviewer would like to put Aftermath in the hands of every senior bureaucrat in the child welfare system.