Elizabeth And After

Plot

Carl McKelvey returns to small-town Ontario, to a landscape marred by 'progress' and dotted by monster homes, to see more of his young daughter Lizzie, and to put behind him the legacy of violence and alcohol that brought about his divorce and subsequent departure. But he soon discovers he is being watched with great interest by two men: the town's most prominent businessman, and his ex-wife's new husband--both engaged in a power struggle that is played out by others in parking lots and rural terrain under hot night skies. But what he doesn't see at first--as he tries to bury his feelings for his former wife--is that a third man is watching: a man who once loved Carl's intelligent and engimatic mother. This three-generational story of passion and subterfuge is limned with Matt Cohen's gift for language and a narrative tension that embraces descriptions of astonishing beauty and power.