After the Race recounts the unraveling of the family Reed. and the raw, serpentine trails the father-son pair of Wayne—an Army Special Forces veteran whose reckless pursuit of contentment propels the story—and Charles—a gifted runner whose effortless successes on the track contrast his struggles everywhere else—blaze through, over and around Wayne’s worsening alcoholism and deteriorating mental health. The plot ricochets between vaulted ceilings—an enormous financial windfall, near misses on distance running records, romance and reunion—and concrete basement floors—arrests, bar-fights, accidents, near-death experiences, the Blizzard of 1993, and the collapse of North American Honeybee populations. The result is a character-driven exploration of the tension between appetite and restraint, between gunpowder and glue, set deep in Virginia apple country, along the northern rim of the Shenandoah Valley.