This is a paperback copy of "THE SWEET HEREAFTER" by Russell Banks; published by Vintage in 1997 [pp. 257].

This copy is in very good unmarked condition.

"The story, which is based on several real life news items, begins in a snowstorm with a school bus descending a hill in the fictional town of Sam Dent in upstate New York. When the bus serves, smashing through a guard rail and plunging into a sandpit filled with icy water, fourteen of the thirty-four children in the bus are killed...The author's sympathetic imaginings of the event following the accident are so skilful and complex that one is obliged to continue...The book's final image, of a country fair seen from a distance, is a heart-stopping passage, one that reaches for the same painful beauty as the end of Joyce's THE DEAD or parts of Thornton Wilder's OUR TOWN." - Time Literary Supplement