The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade

The Undertaking is a collection of loosely-linked essays on death, dying, grief, and bereavement — or as Thomas Lynch puts it, "the vulnerable underbelly of the hardier nouns: life, liberty, the pursuit of... well, you know." Lynch is a talented writer — warm and charming, with an edge of witty humor — and he runs his own funeral home ("a kind of family farm, working the back forty of the emotional register") in the small town of Milford, Michigan. This informed perspective allows his somber essays to be infused with real-life details, including stories of cremation ashes that remain uncollected for years, funerals that are "pre-arranged" by the living, and even the death and embalming of Lynch's own father, who suffered several heart attacks and "survived all but one."