A father and daughter imagine what they were before this lifetime, and what they might become when they move on.

Sitting on the beach, in formal wear that hints they may have just left a funeral, Frances asks her dad a big, impossible question: what’s on either side of life as we know it?

Frances’s dad doesn’t have the easy answers he wishes he could give her, so they put their heads together. Once, a long long time ago, they were rocks. Then maybe, Frances suggests, they were whales. Eventually they probably became stars. Only one thing is for sure: they loved each other in every form, and whatever shape they take next, that will never change.

Every parent knows there are some things you teach your kids, and others you have to learn right along with them. When the big mysteries arise, Katie Palazzola’s profound and profoundly-accessible Before and After is the perfect companion.