After You’ve Gone

Willa was tired of her life; her work in the local Co-op was repetitive and lonely, and going dancing with her more worldly-wise friend Pauline was the only thing she had to look forward to. But then she met Tommy Costello, a sailor and as handsome as he was smooth-tongued. Where Tommy was, there was life. That was what she'd felt about him from the first moment she'd met him when he'd asked her to dance the Charleston. And with no family of her own, Willa longed for unity, love and adventure. Tommy Costello appeared to offer her all of that.
But life is never simple, and the romance that started with such a promising future soon took an unexpected turn. After falling pregnant and a somewhat rushed marriage, Willa finds herself beginning to doubt her feelings and Tommy's intentions while he is away on a year-long round-the-world tour with the British Special Service Squadron in the Navy. And Ina Costello, Tommy's controlling and interfering mother, only fuels Willa's claustrophobia and doubts.
Willa's only escape is through reading books, which submerge her in somebody else's life when the constraints of her own have become too much to bear. And it is at the local library that she meets Richard Fitzwilliam, a struggling author with a similar passion for reading, whose friendship gradually begins to change Willa's life. Despite her initial reluctance, she finds herself beginning to enjoy, even prefer, the new life being offered to her. But how long can it last, as Tommy's steady progress around the world will eventually bring him back home?
After You've Gone is an account of one woman's struggle to find happiness and independence in 1920s society.