Before Ever After

Three years after her husband Max’s death, Shelley is still adjusting to the silence he left behind. Then the doorbell rings. On her doorstep stands a young man so like Max, it’s impossible to look away: same eyes, same smile, same age – and offering an impossible story. Paolo claims to be Max’s grandson, and that Max is not only alive and well, but unchanged by time. Drawn in equal parts by hope and heartbreak, Shelley jets off across the globe with Paolo in search of the truth. Along the way, as Shelley recounts Max's stories of bloody Parisian barricades, medieval Austrian kitchens, and buried Roman boathouses, she begins to piece together the story of who her husband was and what these new revelations mean for her happily ever after. Because not all stories end where they are supposed to.