After Dad

"I had a horrible stepfather and he was the reason I ran away from home and ended up with a man I thought could be my father. The only trouble was, it wasn't a daughter he was looking for." After Dad, a coming-of-age tale with a difference, is the story of Ariel's emergence into the world after spending two years as the often-willing abductee of Will, a man who stopped at nothing to fulfill his obsessive fantasy. It is the story of her emotional healing and re-entry into normal life as she absorbs and comes to terms with all that had happened in those two years. Now living with her birth father, Ariel faces the task of integrating with her peers and engaging in activities more appropriate for a sixteen-year-old. She befriends Pat, a fellow student in a philosophy class at the local college and a gadfly and catalyst for Ariel's growth and healing. She quickly becomes Ariel's window on the real world, a sounding board and a counterpart and mirror for Ariel's feelings. They shape each other as together they reveal the full horror of what happened to Ariel in those missing two years. Told with humor and poignancy, this is a charming sequel to Finding Dad, an earlier novel by Margaret Pitz.