The Sweet Hereafter

This is about what a tragedy does to a small town in upstate New York. It was beautifully written, but it was hard and sad to read. 

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

James Mustich

Russell Banks writes books about ordinary people trying to live decent lives in less than ideal circumstances. In the case of The Sweet Hereafter, the terrible calamity is a school bus accident in an upstate New York town; the mundane reality is that the town’s life must go on after its children have been killed in the crash. Providing different perspectives on events, overlapping stories told by four different people portray how each narrator must process grief, and struggle for meaning, in his or her own way. Banks’s novel allows us to see into the heart of a community that is speechless with sorrow. With the same magnanimity through which he imparts the lessons of calamity, Banks imparts the lessons of community as well.