The Sweet Hereafter

Dolores and Abbott have mostly stayed out of the public view after the accident. Dolores attends the funeral services because to do so is, for her, “something crucial between [her] and the children” (224). Dolores has been terminated from her job as a bus driver and still struggles emotionally every time she sees a school bus. She has to look away. She starts a job driving patrons of the Lake Placid hotels. She is very lonely after the accident and only really communicates with Abbott. Her son, Reginald, invites her and Abbott to move up to Plattsburgh to live with him, but she refuses. 

Dolores and Abbott decide to attend the Sam Dent County Fair. They have both been attending the fair since they were children, long before they knew each other. Every year, Abbott gets excited about the demolition derby, “almost like a child” (221), while Dolores likes the livestock exhibitions because they remind her of her childhood, when her father was a dairy farmer. Abbott likes to sit at the top of the grandstand and every year men volunteer to help lift him in his wheelchair up to the top. 

However, this year, after the accident, Dolores and Abbott have a very different experience at the fair.