Hereafter is a gorgeous and devastating triumph. This award-winning novella follows Pattylee’s journey from early motherhood through the fog of bereavement after she loses her teenage son to brain cancer. Infused with surprising imagery and textured, poetic language, Sarah Freligh guides us through the oft-fractured landscape of grief and memory, time and hope. This is prose that sparks with remarkable depth and emotional honesty. In her signature micro-style, Freligh delivers a true masterclass of the novella-in-flash form. — Sara Hills, author of The Evolution of Birds Sarah Freligh is a foremost voice, if not the foremost voice, in the world of micros – those deceptively small stories that explode beyond their word counts. Her ability to squeeze an entire universe into a story the size of a hand is on full and glorious display in Hereafter where Freligh has micro’d her way into perfection. This is a poignant novella, with Freligh’s signature working class protagonist, in this case Pattylee, whose world is a quiet tornado of grief. Written in that blend of accessibility and exquisitely shaped poetic imagery that is so present in all her writing, Sarah Freligh’s Hereafter will tear you up from the inside-out. And then you will want to read it once more to feel the ache all over again. — Francine Witte, author of RADIO WATER and The Way of the Wind