The Sweet Hereafter

In the novel The Sweet Hereafter, published in 1991, author Russell Banks tells the story of a fatal school bus accident and its aftermath through four first-person narrators. As the novel unfolds in the small town of Sam Dent, New York the characters reveal exactly what happened on the day of the accident—January 27, 1990—the immediate reaction of the people involved, and how each of the four characters is changed by the accident. Fourteen children die in the accident, and eight different families lose one or more of their children. One girl, an eighth-grade beauty queen named Nichole Burnell, survives but suffers a severe and disabling back injury. 

The novel explores themes of loss, grief, guilt, blame, judgment, justice, denial, comprehension, isolation, and death. It also explores the role that children play both in their parents’ lives and in the larger community. 

The novel opens with bus driver Dolores Driscoll attempting to explain what she saw in the road, on the day of the accident, that made her turn the wheel and trigger the crash. She explains that she was trying to avoid hitting something, but she is not sure what it was exactly, if anything.