Afterlife by Julia Alvarez
This novel follows Antonia Vega, a retired college professor as she still mourns the loss of her husband Sam a year after his death, and is drawn into the immigration issues and love life of the illegal Mexican farmhand working for her neighbour. Antonia is still feeling at loose ends without her husband, and although her three sisters, Mona, Izzy, and Tilly, contact her regularly, and she values their close relationship, she doesn't feel like getting involved in new things. Antonia and her sisters immigrated to the United States with their parents when they were young children, and because she speaks Spanish she gets drawn into the issues next door.
She has volunteered with the immigrant community in the past, but has really pulled into a more solitary existence since the death of her husband, and is only gradually drawn out as the situation lands on her doorstep of the young farmhand's pregnant girlfriend.
To add to the upheaval in her life, Izzy, her oldest sister, always a bit flighty, has seemed to become more impulsive lately and goes missing enroute to a sisterly meetup. As the sisters try to track her down, and deal with what they might find at the end of their search, Antonia finds that there are still things in life that need her attention despite her grief.
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