After The First Death

After the First Death (1979) by Robert Cormier is a juvenile suspense/horror that examines the fragility of life through a terrorist hijacking of a bus full of children. The book in conjunction with Cormier’s two most famous teen titles, The Chocolate War (1974) and I Am the Cheese (1977), won him the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the Young Adult Services Division of the American Library Association in 1991. Cormier was born in 1925 and lived his entire life in Leominster, MA. He had his first professional publication in The Sign Magazine while a freshman at Fitchburg State College. After graduation, he worked writing scripts and commercials for radio station WTAG. He went on to have an award-winning career in newspaper journalism, working for the Worcester Telegram and Fitchburg Sentinel. He left the newspaper to write novels fulltime in 1978 and passed away in 2000. This guide follows the Random House Childrens Books 1979 version of After the First Death.

Plot Summary

After the First Death follows several characters who are affected by the terrorist hijacking of a bus in Massachusetts. The book consists of 12 parts that alternate between the events of the hijacking (even-numbered sections) and two viewpoints looking back on the event (odd-numbered sections).