The novel After the Fog caught my interest because it’s a rarity—a novel featuring environmental history. Stories of this type are badly underrepresented in literature. As I read, things got even better, subject-wise. The novel turned out to be about a working-class, ethnic family in 1948 Donora, Pennsylvania. This is another type of story badly underrepresented in literature.
Donora, a mill town, was dominated by steel and zinc mills in 1948. (It’s also, I should point out as a baseball guy, the hometown of Stan Musial and Ken Griffey Jr. and Sr.) The fog that features in After the Fog, therefore, is not truly fog. It’s a cloud of industrial pollution that blankets the town for five days and kills dozens of its residents. The primary narrator, Rose Pavlesic, is a community nurse, making her well-positioned to understand what is happening.
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The Story of After the Fog
For me, the believability of the characters was a strong plus. Each was flawed in their own way, and those flaws seemed realistic for a 1940s working-class town like Donora. Rose has a number of personal secrets that she hides behind her façade of professionality as a nurse. She also, like many Donorans, has a drinking problem. Thing is, everyone else in her family has some secrets, too. Busy with the combination of nursing and picking up the slack for certain family members, Rose has no inkling of the things that are about to shake up her life.
Without spoiling the plot, I’ll just write that everything goes bad for Rose just as the fog descends on the town. This makes the fog blanketing Donora symbolic. It represents the fog that had blanketed Rose’s understanding of how many family secrets she doesn’t know. By the end of After the Fog, we find Rose not always a sympathetic character. But she remains a realistic one, and I can appreciate that.
Other Aspects of After the Fog
The main plot point I questioned a little was the timing. Every family has some secrets, sure. At least, every literary family does. Families with no secrets aren’t much fun to read about. But to have all of them come out within five days, well, that seemed like piling on more than was necessary. And I thought Rose’s eventual recovery would have felt more plausible with at least one family member to help pull her through.
Perhaps this is the author’s way of highlighting another thing people want to believe about 1940s America—the whole individualist ethos of rugged millworkers pulling through from toughness and grit alone. Or perhaps not. Rose does have some help, just not the expected kind.
Who Might Enjoy the Book
I think I spelled this out in the opening paragraph. If you’ve been waiting for a book that features the environment, you might like the book. If you are interested in working-class stories about the proverbial hardscrabble, industrial town, you might like the book. (Interesting fact – Donora’s population peaked in the 1920s and has declined every decade since.) If, like me, you’re interested in both, chances are good you’ll like the book. I found the writing solid, the descriptions nuanced, and most parts of the story quite believable for 1940s America.
To check out my other recent reviews, please read:
Etched in Starlight, by Rosie Chapel
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
The Premonition, by Michael Lewis
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