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AFTERMATH, Brian Shawver's debut novel, is the story of a tragic event, its impact on two very different people, and the search to find the truth behind the tragedy.
Casey Fielder is the manager of "O'Ruddy's," a chain restaurant located in the blue-collar town of East Breed, Pennsylvania. Casey takes pride in his work, is very methodical and timely, and feels that he is the perfect man for the job. One night, as he and a co-worker look on, two groups of teenage boys begin to fight outside the restaurant's parking lot, and the result is the horrific injury to one boy, Colin Chase, and his near-death experience because Casey did not act fast enough to call the police. Casey believes he did things by the book, and AFTERMATH traces his thought processes as he tries to justify why he didn't do what everyone else says he should have done to save that boy from the beating he received.
Casey and his co-worker Jenny are fired and the restaurant closes, but Casey cannot let this event go. He doesn't feel that he should be blamed for his inaction, but at the same time his gut tells him that something bigger was at play that night. So he spends a lot of time doing detective work, attempting to figure out what really happened. He also tries justifying why he didn't make a call to the police, and he finds himself telling his version of what really took place outside the restaurant to anyone who asks him over and over. Casey recalls that Jenny told him the phones were out of order, but at the time the police originally questioned him, he neglected to tell this part of the story. Thus, the newspapers painted Casey as a man who did not have the common decency to help out a kid who was being beaten to death, let alone try to stop a fight between two rival groups of teenage boys. Casey's life is changed forever because of the stigma that is now associated with him and the beating of Colin Chase.
In the meantime, Lea Chase, Colin's mother, is trying to deal with her "new" son. Colin's injuries have left him brain-damaged, and his IQ is now that of a four-year-old. Colin was once the "man on campus" and was the best looking, the most athletic, and had the most girlfriends. But there is another side to this, and Lea knows that she needs to find out why these boys tried to kill her son. She can't believe that there isn't a justifiable motive behind it. Just like Casey, she feels that there was pre-meditation behind the rumble at O'Ruddy's, and she does her own detective work to discover the truth.
What she finds out is something any mother wouldn't want to know about her son, and the more she learns, the more she believes that Colin, in his current situation, is a much better person than he ever was before his brain injury. While Geoffrey, Colin's father, adjusts easily to the new Colin, Lea does not, and she tries to reconcile this new son with the boy he used to be, a very disturbed and angry man who, she soon finds out, was a bully and a tormentor of almost everyone he knew.
AFTERMATH is a different kind of tale. While a traditional story would try to evoke sympathy for Colin, Shawver does quite the opposite. And while Colin could have been the focus, he really is only a secondary character. The book is foremost about Lea and Casey, and how their lives have changed as a result of the beating that Colin took that ill-fated night. I found this novel refreshing because of its different approach to character study.
This is definitely an auspicious start to what I hope will be a long and critically successful career for Brian Shawver. AFTERMATH most likely will appear on my list of favorite books for 2006.
--- Reviewed by Marie Hashima Lofton
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