SOURCE: Cotter, James Finn. Review of The Sweet Hereafter, by Russell Banks. America 116, no. 4157 (2 May 1992): 391.

In the following review, Cotter asserts that the driving thematic focus of The Sweet Hereafter is Banks's “relentless quest to plumb the mystery of tragedy as it affects individuals and communities.”

A school bus runs off the road into a frozen water-filled sandpit and 14 children are killed. The Sweet Hereafter, by Russell Banks, narrates the bitter aftermath that envelopes the upstate New York community of Sam Dent in the months that follow. Sorrow, anger and recriminations divide people already isolated by vast space and cold climate. Lonely lives turn inward and winter locks in spring.

Banks, the author of ten other books including Continental Drift and Affliction, describes the barren but majestic landscape of mountains and forests with a painter's eye and captures the painful yet noble lives of the townspeople with a...