How does one keep compassion alive while suffering the loss of love and close friendship? How does a witness to atrocious human rights violations search for meaning in an unstable world? Carolina Rivera Escamilla’s collection of short stories, entitled ...after... chronicles a girl’s coming of age in turbulent times. She confronts repression, poverty, civil war, dashed parental hopes for disappearing and disappeared children, and the death squad murders of friends and family in 1980s El Salvador. As everything breaks apart, She and her people reach for shreds of certainty and hope in a future for everyone.