Right After the Weather

Chicago, 2016. Cate is a stage designer in her early forties with a firm plan to fix up her life. Though she's started a promising new relationship with the glamorous Maureen, she is haunted by an old, still-seductive affair. On top of this, her newly heartbroken ex-husband is now camped out in Cate's spare bedroom, in thrall to online conspiracy theories. The best model of serious adulthood in her life is her best friend Neale, a yoga instructor who lives nearby with her son. While Cate is busy with work and her string of messy relationships, a pair of small-time criminals only a few blocks away are leading a very different kind of life - dark and desperate. Their world collides with Cate's the day she walks into Neale's kitchen to find these strangers assaulting her friend. Forced to take action, Cate does something she would not have thought she could do - in an instant, her world is overturned. Right After the Weather explores with eloquence and compassion what happens when a group of formerly untested friends are confronted with their worst fears. Anshaw's flawed, beautifully observed characters grapple with love, trauma, and the darker aspects of human nature in this stunning novel about change and the reverberations of our actions.