Anna in the Afterlife (14 page)

When the last car had driven the guests away, back to Janet's house for cold cuts and hard-boiled eggs, when the grave diggers had putted away in their little tractor to dig the next grave, when Anna was finally tucked in for eternity next to Abram, when the afternoon passed to evening and the sun gave way to moon (neither of which would smite Anna again), Anna accepted her fate. She had been here on earth and now she was gone. The opera had reached its climactic conclusion, the curtain had come down, the characters of Anna's drama had bowed and moved offstage. The house lights were black.

Anna was ended.

 

 

MERRILL JOAN GERBER is a prize-winning novelist and short story writer.

Among her novels are
THE KINGDOM OF BROOKLYN
, winner of the Ribalow Award from
Hadassah Magazine
for “the best English-language book of fiction on a Jewish theme,”
ANNA IN THE AFTERLIFE
, chosen by the
Los Angeles Times
as a “Best Novel of 2002” and
KING OF THE WORLD
, which won the Pushcart Editors' Book Award. She has written five volumes of short stories. Her stories and essays have appeared in
The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Mademoiselle, The Sewanee Review, The Virginia Review, Commentary, Salmagundi, The American Scholar, The Southwest Review
and elsewhere.

Her story, “I Don't Believe This,” won an O. Henry Prize. “This is a Voice From Your Past” was included in
The Best American Mystery Stories
.

Her non-fiction books include a travel memoir,
BOTTICELLI BLUE SKIES: An American in Florence, a book of personal essays, GUT FEELINGS: A Writer's Truths and Minute Inventions
and
OLD MOTHER, LITTLE CAT: a Writer's Reflections on her Kitten, her Aged Mother…and Life
.

Gerber earned her BA in English from the University of Florida, her MA in English from Brandeis University and was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fiction Fellowship to Stanford University. She presently teaches fiction writing at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.

She can be reached by e-mail at:
[email protected]
See her web page at
www.its.caltech.edu/~mjgerber

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