After Elise

After Elise by Denise Pattiz Bogard is a novel about unexpected tragedy and how it changes the lives of a dysfunctional family while demonstrating that patience, understanding and forgiveness bring hope.Imagine this: You are a married mother of two, driving to the grocery store in a storm, changing the radio station, answering your cell phone, when you notice a woman stranded by the side of the road and, on impulse, decide to pull over….Teri Berger’s car skids in the rain, killing twenty-year-old Elise and leaving Teri reeling with guilt and the rest of her family in disarray as they struggle to adjust to this new reality. Already strained family relationships are tested, and Teri’s marriage suffers, her son withdraws, and her daughter faces a heartbreaking decision.AFTER ELISE confronts readers with the most everyday tragedy—an accident that could happen to anyone—and its effects, changing the lives forever of everyone involved.Ultimately, the novel is a story of forgiveness and healing.After Elise was a finalist in the 2017 Faulkner-Wisdom Writing Competition sponsored by the Faulkner Society.

DENISE PATTIZ BOGARD, author of AFTER ELISE and THE MIDDLE STEP, has been writing professionally for more than 40 years. Her award-winning fiction and non-fiction have been published in, among others, The Oklahoma Literary Review, Newsweek, Lady's Circle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Teacher Magazine, and two of her essays have been anthologized. Denise earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Missouri-St. Louis and her BS in journalism and history from Indiana University. Over the years she has been a journalist, a co-founding public relations partner, a certified secondary English/writing teacher, the founder of St. Louis Writers Workshop, and a novelist. Denise lives in St. Louis with her husband. AFTER ELISE has been named a finalist in the Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Contest, novel category.