Ever after

On August 3, 1988, heavy black smoke engulfed an Oregon highway, causing a massive 23 car pile-up that claimed the lives of novelist William Wharton's thirty-six year-old daughter, Kate, her husband, Burt, and their two infant daughters. Victims of field burning, a routine agricultural practice that continues to this day, they were incinerated alive in their van. How could this be allowed to happen? And how can one ever come to terms with such a loss? In Ever After, William Wharton searches for the answers to these questions. This, his first work of nonfiction, is a gripping account of a father's grief and relentless pursuit of justice. Writing with the inspired simplicity that has won him great acclaim, he evokes the voices and thoughts of his loved ones - the living and the dead - to reconstruct and reckon with the events that changed his life forever.