Aftermath
In this powerful, shocking and highly absorbing new work, Anne Cameron picks up a thread from her prize-winning novel Dreamspeaker, in which an eleven-year-old abuse survivor and runaway named Peter Baxter is taken from his adopted family - two reclusive Native elders - only to be destroyed by the child welfare system that supposedly exists to protect him. Cameron asks why more and more kids are at risk, in spite of official inquiries, public outcries and millions of taxpayer's dollars. She finds part of the answer in the "ordinary" nuclear family, presenting a technicolour nightmare of hand-me-down dysfunction spiked with the black humour reminiscent of her 1995 bestselling novel The Whole Fam Damily, and another part in the child welfare system that covers the butts of everyone except the kids.

Cousins Fran and Liz are children of parents who came from violent families, then grew up and started new violent families. By the time Fran has had a few children and a long procession of "difficult" fosters, she has begun to write down her family history and to realize just how deeply troubled her family is - back through who-knows-how-many generations. While Fran struggles to work out her past, Liz concentrates on her violin and music career and tries to forget her own traumatic childhood. But when Peter Baxter's tragic end hits the headlines, the story affects more people than just his family members and social workers. Everyone becomes involved, from his peers at the reform school to Fran and Liz and their families.

What's to be done? It's too late for Peter Baxter, but in the aftermath, one by one, people can stand up to the system and make a difference. Fran and Liz, who choose different ways to survive the horror of their childhoods, remain friends and allies as they repair the damage visited on their children and grandchildren. Anna Fleming, a social worker with an impossible case load, shows what caring really means. And Jackie, a kid who's never had a break, just keeps on running. Their story makes Aftermath both deeply moving and profoundly hopeful.

1003558214
Aftermath
In this powerful, shocking and highly absorbing new work, Anne Cameron picks up a thread from her prize-winning novel Dreamspeaker, in which an eleven-year-old abuse survivor and runaway named Peter Baxter is taken from his adopted family - two reclusive Native elders - only to be destroyed by the child welfare system that supposedly exists to protect him. Cameron asks why more and more kids are at risk, in spite of official inquiries, public outcries and millions of taxpayer's dollars. She finds part of the answer in the "ordinary" nuclear family, presenting a technicolour nightmare of hand-me-down dysfunction spiked with the black humour reminiscent of her 1995 bestselling novel The Whole Fam Damily, and another part in the child welfare system that covers the butts of everyone except the kids.

Cousins Fran and Liz are children of parents who came from violent families, then grew up and started new violent families. By the time Fran has had a few children and a long procession of "difficult" fosters, she has begun to write down her family history and to realize just how deeply troubled her family is - back through who-knows-how-many generations. While Fran struggles to work out her past, Liz concentrates on her violin and music career and tries to forget her own traumatic childhood. But when Peter Baxter's tragic end hits the headlines, the story affects more people than just his family members and social workers. Everyone becomes involved, from his peers at the reform school to Fran and Liz and their families.

What's to be done? It's too late for Peter Baxter, but in the aftermath, one by one, people can stand up to the system and make a difference. Fran and Liz, who choose different ways to survive the horror of their childhoods, remain friends and allies as they repair the damage visited on their children and grandchildren. Anna Fleming, a social worker with an impossible case load, shows what caring really means. And Jackie, a kid who's never had a break, just keeps on running. Their story makes Aftermath both deeply moving and profoundly hopeful.

15.45 Out Of Stock
Aftermath

Aftermath

by Anne Cameron
Aftermath

Aftermath

by Anne Cameron

Paperback

$15.45  $21.95 Save 30% Current price is $15.45, Original price is $21.95. You Save 30%.
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Temporarily Out of Stock Online
  • PICK UP IN STORE

    Your local store may have stock of this item.

Related collections and offers


Overview

In this powerful, shocking and highly absorbing new work, Anne Cameron picks up a thread from her prize-winning novel Dreamspeaker, in which an eleven-year-old abuse survivor and runaway named Peter Baxter is taken from his adopted family - two reclusive Native elders - only to be destroyed by the child welfare system that supposedly exists to protect him. Cameron asks why more and more kids are at risk, in spite of official inquiries, public outcries and millions of taxpayer's dollars. She finds part of the answer in the "ordinary" nuclear family, presenting a technicolour nightmare of hand-me-down dysfunction spiked with the black humour reminiscent of her 1995 bestselling novel The Whole Fam Damily, and another part in the child welfare system that covers the butts of everyone except the kids.

Cousins Fran and Liz are children of parents who came from violent families, then grew up and started new violent families. By the time Fran has had a few children and a long procession of "difficult" fosters, she has begun to write down her family history and to realize just how deeply troubled her family is - back through who-knows-how-many generations. While Fran struggles to work out her past, Liz concentrates on her violin and music career and tries to forget her own traumatic childhood. But when Peter Baxter's tragic end hits the headlines, the story affects more people than just his family members and social workers. Everyone becomes involved, from his peers at the reform school to Fran and Liz and their families.

What's to be done? It's too late for Peter Baxter, but in the aftermath, one by one, people can stand up to the system and make a difference. Fran and Liz, who choose different ways to survive the horror of their childhoods, remain friends and allies as they repair the damage visited on their children and grandchildren. Anna Fleming, a social worker with an impossible case load, shows what caring really means. And Jackie, a kid who's never had a break, just keeps on running. Their story makes Aftermath both deeply moving and profoundly hopeful.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781550171938
Publisher: Harbour Publishing Company, Limited
Publication date: 01/01/1999
Pages: 400
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.84(d)

About the Author

Anne Cameron was born in Nanaimo, BC. She began writing at an early age, starting with theatre scripts and screenplays. In 1979, her film Dreamspeaker, directed by Claude Jutra, won seven Canadian Film Awards, including best script. After being published as a novel, Dreamspeaker went on to win the Gibson Award for Literature. She has published more than 30 books, including the underground classic Daughters of Copper Woman, its sequel, Dzelarhons, novels, stories, poems and legends - for adults and children. Her most recent novels are Family Resemblances, Hardscratch Row, and a new, revised edition of Daughters of Copper Woman. She lives in Tahsis, BC

Read an Excerpt

The new place wasn't bad, it was just so far from everyone Fran knew. Not just miles away, days away by bus. They lived within sight and sound of the rail line, and the little kids loved to run up the hill and stand waving like fury as the train thundered past, clickety-clack clickety-clack. The engineer aIways blew his whistle and the kids thought it was for them.

"He blows when you aren't there, too," Fran told them.

"That's to say hello, anyway," little Scotty insisted. He was so convinced Fran didn't have the heart to make him believe the truth.

There were two bedrooms, a small living room and a kitchen about big enough for you to sit at the table while frying bacon on the oil-burning stove. The bathroom was a partitioned-off section of what had been a big porch before it got closed in and called a spare room. "You can have that for your own," Jo-Beth said apologetically, but Fran shook her head. It was blistering hot in the summer and as cold as the Arctic in winter. Besides, who wants to have a washing machine and a dirty clothes basket in what's supposed to be your bedroom, and a back door without any kind of lock, where people can just saunter in if they want to and there's your bed, and no privacy at all? Might as well sleep in the middle of the highway, with the white line for a pillow.

She shared the bedroom with the little kids - probably a good decision, all things considered. There was a slide bolt on the inside, and even though Jo-Beth rambled on about What if there was a fire, how would I get in there to get you out, Fran slid that bolt shut at night. There were just too many yahoos she didn't know who wound up at the place after hours with a case of beer or two.

Jo-Beth was working as a dispatcher at the taxi office, and the best shift was the one where she left the house after supper and worked from eight at night until eight in the morning. After that shift she would come home, make breakfast for everyone, maybe even help Fran with the laundry or something, then go to bed and saw logs until suppertime. She'd get up, have a meal with them and be a mother until it was time to go to work. She supervised the bath, washed hair, laughed, smooched and let them watch while she put on her face and got ready for work. She was sober the whole time. But after the other shift, from eight in the morning to eight at night, she'd stop off at the pub for a couple of cold ones on her way home. And Jo-Beth was no more capable of having just a couple than she was capable of joining the Olympic snowshoe team. Fran knew it wasn't going to change, no matter how many promises Jo-Beth made. She just couldn't walk past a pub unless the door was locked.

And it seemed as if the rest of the world didn't want her to leave alone at closing time either. lf Jo-Beth came home with just one guy things weren't bad, and if that guy stayed two or three days things were all right, sometimes almost nice. It was when the whole damn troop arrived, and your life got invaded by people you didn't know from Adam's off-ox and didn't want to know either. Sometimes the mad hatter's beer party would go on for days. Fran hated Jo-Beth's days off. Either you didn't see her at all because she was at the pub or at someone else's place, or you saw too much of her and her noisy friends.

"Ah, don't be that way," Jo-Beth pleaded, "they just want to be friendly, that's all. God, Fran, the world isn't halfways near as bad as you seem to want to think it is."

"Wake up, Momma. Take a look at what it really is."

But not Jo-Beth, she wasn't going to look at anything ever again. "Put on his best clothes," she wept, "went off lookin' like some kind of movie star or something, and for all I know he stepped off the edge of the earth and fell up to the moon. Just gone."

Fran knew it was nothing of the sort. Fran knew what had happened. It was like watching a movie, a private movie in her head. There were only two possible versions, neither of them with a happy ending. Either big Scotty had lived or he had died. In either version, the cop was bear meat. The cop car hidden in a gully or a ravine or off the Malahat and down three hundred feet to the chuck, maybe with the cop and big Scott both still inside. She didn't know if Scotty had taken one of the handguns he'd lifted off a German he'd killed or if he'd used a violin string or a rolled-up magazine or any of the other things they'd taught him to use, but he'd done it, as sure as God made little green apples. Probably just waited in an alley until the cop came along the sidewalk playing his part, being the lawman, walking the beat. Then grab him by the elbow, swing him into the alley, the sharp outer edge of the hand on the end of the nose driving the nosebone up into the skull, then back into his own car, on the floor probably, and drive away as calm as calm could be. Or maybe wait in the parking lot outside the police station, the last place they'd think anyone would dare try it. For big Scotty it would be easy, he'd been trained by the best in the world. Thump, then drive away, obeying all the traffic laws. Maybe up Green Mountain, maybe along a logging road up Copper Canyon way, or maybe down the highway and off through Cowichan into Paldi or Youbou or any of two thousand places where a crumpled wreck would be raided by bears, ravens, wolves, mink and rats until only bones were left, then the salal, blackberry and you-name-it would cover the car completely, the alders would grow up and punch through the glass, and before long the thing would rot down so that even if someone did find it they would think it was just another ancient hunk of junk.

And either big Scotty was dead inside it with a bullet from. his own gun lodged in what was left of his skull, or he'd just as calm as anything caught the ferry to Vancouver and then a bus to Seattle or to Tampa, Florida. That one Fran didn't mind at all, Scotty working a charter fish boat out of Tampa, his hair bleached snow white by the same hot sun that had tanned his skin to the colour of arbutus bark. Barefoot, bare chested, in shorts or cutoff jeans, he ran his charter boat, catching bluefin and swordfish, drinking beer from. bottles kept cool in the fish hold where the crushed ice was loaded in by the half ton. Fran could almost smell him, see him standing at the wheel, his body layered in muscle, singing and ignoring the admiring looks of all those women. Scotty would never get married ever again, and he'd never have another family of kids, he wouldn't do that, he wouldn't betray or abandon them that way. He'd live on his boat, alone except for the people he took out on charters, and everyone would wonder what a good-lookin' man like him was doing on his ownsome.

If he wasn't dead he was on the run, and one way or the other they'd never see him again. Even if he wasn't her real dad, even if she'd been nearly a year old before he set eyes on her, she had thought he was her dad before she found out different. And maybe what you believe somehow becomes real. Maybe what seems to be, is. He'd have made three of any of these idiots, that's for sure. Even when she was drunk, Jo-Beth knew it. And cried, lots of times. "Oh, Fran, what am I going to do? I'm so scared."

Fran hated school. Nobody there said anything to her about Jo-Beth's parties, but she knew they knew, and she knew they talked about it to each other. They pretended to be friendly, but it was only pretend. Fran hated knowing the teachers sat in their coffee room and talked to each other about how sad it was, how awful, how difficult for the poor children. Poor, poor things. But she couldn't tell Jo-Beth how she felt because Jo-Beth would go into a fury and start slapping and hitting, with a kindling stick or a leather belt or the cord on the iron. Then not only did nothing change, but she had to go to school with welts on her arms and legs and even in wintertime with a long-sleeved sweater it was impossible to cover all of them. Then they had even more reason to say poor thing. Poor, poor little thing.

It was bad enough and scary enough when the men fought, but when the women started fighting it was horrible. Men - well, they do that, and you walk around always half expecting a fight to break out, especially if there's the smell of booze in the room. But when the women fight, you know things have gone as far as they can go before people go insane and start doing things like setting themselves on fire or carving their initials on their cheeks. The first time Fran saw women fighting all she could do was stand in the open doorway gaping. It wasn't like in some silly movie, with a lot of rolling around and hair-pulling and nobody's makeup getting smeared and the women looking as if they were practising to make love to the men. In real life, women fought just as mean and as hard and as awful as men, with grunts and punches and terrible scratching, like tigers, with long bleeding claw marks. You slimy cunt, I'll tear your fuckin' eyes out. You scabby twat, you'll be sorry.

And Jo-Beth watching, shaking her head and saying Good God, girls, try to be ladies, will you, and then laughing, as if some point had been proved. I mean, my God, girls, if you can't be ladies you're in trouble. Because whatever else she was, Jo-Beth was a lady. In her own mind, at least. She didn't roll on the floor grunting and cursing, nor stand there swinging away like a fool.

Even worse than that, the really awful one, the one Fran knew she would never get used to, was when some guy started hitting on his woman. And all the women would run to huddle together, calling out things like Oh, God, stop him, and Jesus, some of you guys do something, and Call the police, he'll kill her. The men sat there looking as if they wished they could put a stop to it, looking uneasy in the same way as if someone had suddenly decided to pee on a parking meter downtown. But they didn't interfere. So someone would get well and truly beaten to shit by someone who was bigger, heavier and way lots stronger, someone who would be ashamed to beat up a man half his size but thought it okay to teach the old lady a goddamn lesson, by God.

All through the good weather, all through the fall and into the start of the cold season, one party after another and nothing but noise going on so much of the time.

The weather was another shock to the system. This wasn't the Island, with lots of rain and fog but no real bitter cold, This was the Interior, and Jo-Beth was right when she said Don't let your nose drip or it'll freeze and you'll have an icicle going from your top lip right up into your sinuses. It was so cold that your nose would bleed from. it. You couldn't put enough blankets on the bed. Not even Christmas time and you had to have hot water bottles in the bed before you could bear to crawl in between the sheets.

Preface

For me, life has seemed to be a collection of spirals, each leading into another, some off-kilter, some others more or less eccentric, and still others becoming dead ends, trailing off by themselves. Once in a while I almost convince myself that in this spiralling I see, or sense, a pattern. There is every chance in the world I delude myself into thinking there is some sort of reason to it all because daily life, up close, is often so untidy and so unreasonable.

And every now and again it feels as if I'm almost back to square one, all set to repeat: one of the spiralling cycles. But before I can start it again I first have to finish things, tidy them up, get them in order so I can move on again. I think the all-knowing shrink types even have a term for the tidying-up process, and I think that term is cloture, which seems to me to be from the French, meaning "closure." Or ''fence.'' Enclosure. Which makes me wonder why they had to get esoteric and try for cloture when they could have as easily said closure or fence or enclosure, but I guess that's how you learn to do things if you stay in school long enough.

Fiction can grab a writer just as strongly as it can grab the reader. Writing is an odd occupation, a bizarre pastime, very similar to trying to grab a handful of water and then hang onto it. If it is true, as the song suggests, that "a dream is a wish your heart makes, when you're fast asleep," perhaps fiction is what happens when the dream your heart makes is grasped firmly and gently (and that's a great trick, try it sometime) and put on paper for others to share. Writing is similar to hypnosis, or selfhypnosis; you sit down at the word processor, or pick up your fountain pen or your ballpoint or your pencil or whatever your particular mechanics of the craft happen to be, and then you "concentrate," and the next thing you know, if it's a good day, it's three hours later, there's a nagging pain in the small of your back, your bum is numb and your bladder is sending out bright red warning signals that its time to shift position or flood the house. And hypnosis, whether self-induced or not, brings with it almost total recall, which is, I believe, why so many of us appear to be so haunted. But hypnosis can be a way to dredge up the bogeys and frights and maybe this time put them to rest.

Way back in the sixties we all parroted, "what goes around comes around." Suddenly everybody capable of growing long hair and/or a moth-eaten beard was going on about karma and past lives and did you ever wonder why so many of them had to be pharaohs or kings or bishops or popes, and so few would admit to having been ditchdiggers or galley slaves? I have personally met at least half a dozen women who claim to have been Cleopatra; I have never met one who claimed to have been llse Koch, the Bitch of Buchenwald. A tall, skinny, bearded, long-haired, Scots-born professor once told me he had been an "Indian chief" in a previous life. Amazingly, he could recall nothing at all of the customs, mores, philosophies or life skills of any of the First Nations. An English-born professor confided in me that he had been a pharaoh, had even so named his son. I haven't met anyone who was a slave, dying of overwork in the construction of a pyramid.

But what pop/cult was blethering on about is very true for some of the darkest parts of our souls. What goes around comes around. Those who were abused become abusers, those who were damaged become damagers, those who were carefully taught not to give a fat rat's ass about others because loving hurts too much teach others not to give a fat rat's ass, and we have become a culture which relates in just about every way except from the heart to the heart.

We don't need any more royal commissions, we don't need any more studies, we don't need any more statistics, we don't need any more bullshit from those without the spines to develop a political will. What we need is for those who get paid better money than most of us will ever see to stop playing with us and properly fund the rape assault centres, the transition houses, the group homes, the places where those who are being regularly crucified on that cross we call "love" can go for help, the places where those who are the victims of atrocity can find quiet, if not peace.

More and more of our children and grandchildren are committing suicide. They are murdering themselves and each other. Our jails are full. Rape is so commonplace a person from another planet would have reason to think we consider it normal. Sexual abuse of children is rampant and aIways has been. But it is not true, as some Christian credo would have us believe, that "there is no hope in us."

We're full of it. One of the most fragile things in the world and it grows in some of the most sterile soil. lt's what keeps me breathing in and breathing out again.

I grew up right in the middle of a horror story even Stephen King couldn't imagine, and I thought all that nutsiness was normal. Instead of sanely deciding I wanted no part of any of that stuff I'd learned, I tiptoed into marriage, and if that wasn't as big a horror story as what had preceded it, it came in a close second. And I gave birth to kids who were born to parents who had no idea at all what life was supposed to be, and even less idea of how to raise children. Society taught me a lot of stuff - the names of the kings and queens of England, the year of the signing of the Magna Carta, and other things even stupider. Nobody taught me to mother.

Except my kids. I learned more from them than I can believe. Unfortunately for them, I learned it late and I learned it the hard way. And did them no favours.

And now I am a grandmother. And that is terrifying. Except my kids taught me well, and I think I am a better Gunga than I was a Mom. And I did not do as badly by my kids as was done by me, so there is some small improvement.

Just not enough, and not fast enough. We do what we did, over and over and over, and do to others what was done to us, over and over and over, and it has to stop. We are smothering in our own filth, we are capable of destroying every living thing on the planet a thousand times over, and it has to stop. We may be the last generation with any choice at all, and my hope is we will choose to stop it.
There will be critics who say this story is incomplete; our lives are incomplete. Others will say there are huge gaps; all our lives have huge gaps. Some will say it is, at times, disjointed; please do not insult me by believing that is an accident. I worked damn hard to get those jarring disjoints! Some will say I am bitter, others will say I am too sentimental. To all of them I say Stop nitpicking and bitching, get off my back and out of my face, if you know so fuckin' much why aren't you writing fiction instead of reviews and critiques?

"Critics are like eunuchs; they know how, when, where, why, with what and to whom - but they can't. . ."
There are no simple answers. But could someone explain to me why it is we can a'ways afford guns and bullets and never afford love? Why we can always find the money for a war against our cousins and never find the money for a war against the harm we do ourselves? Why we can always screw more money out of the working class taxpayer so we can drop bombs and destroy things but never find the money to undo the pollution? Why are we so willing to pay more money to break up a family than to help that family heal? And why does there aIways have to be "fault" found and "blame" assigned, and why is the victim aIways the one to be blamed?

Why do we call them victims? Why can't we call them survivors?

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews