What books caught my eye this week as they passed over the library counter and under my scanner? Well two memoirs dealing with the same subject.....
First up was
We'll Be The Last Ones To Let You Down by
Rachel Hanel.
From the
University of Minnesota Press:
"Rachael Hanel’s name was inscri
bed on a graves
tone when she was eleven years old. Yet this wasn’t at all unusual in her world: her fa
ther was a gravedigger in
the small Minnesota
town of Waseca, and death was her family’s business. Her parents were forty-two years old and in good health when
they erected
their graves
tone—Rachael’s name was simply a branch on
the sprawling family tree etched on
the back of
the s
tone. As she puts it:
I grew up in cemeteries.
And
you don’t grow up in cemeteries—surrounded by headst
ones and s
tories, questions, curiosity—without
becoming an adept and sensitive observer of death and loss as experienced by
the people in this small
town. For Rachael Hanel, wandering among
tombst
ones, reading
the names, and wondering about
the townsfolk and
their lives, death was, in many ways,
beautiful and mysterious. Death and mourning:
these she unders
tood. But when Rachael’s fa
ther—Digger O’Dell—passes away suddenly when she is fifteen, she and her family are abruptly and harshly transformed from bystanders
to participants. And for
the first time, Rachael realizes that death and grief are very different.
At times heartbreaking and at o
thers gently humorous and uplifting,
We’ll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down presents
the unique, moving perspective of a gravedigger’s daughter and her lifelong relationship with death and grief. But it is also a masterful meditation on
the living elements of our cemeteries: our neighbors, friends, and families—
the very his
tories of our
towns and cities—and how
these things come
toge
ther in
the eyes of a
young girl whose childhood is suffused with both death and
the wonder of
the living."
Next up was
Nine Years Under: Coming of Age in an Inner-City Funeral Home by
Sheri Booker.
From Gotham Books:
"Six Feet Under meets The Wire in
a dazzling and darkly comic memoir about coming-of-age in a black funeral home
in Baltimore
Sheri Booker was only fifteen years old when she
started working at Wylie’s Funeral Home in West Baltimore. She had no idea that
her summer job would become nine years of immersion into a hidden world.
With AIDS and gang violence threatening to wipe out a generation of
black men, Wylie’s was never short on business. As families came together to
bury one of their own, Booker was privy to their most intimate moments of grief
and despair. But along with the sadness, Booker encountered moments of dark
humor: brawls between mistresses and widows, and long-winded preachers who
forgot the names of the deceased. While she never got over her terror of the
embalming room, Booker learned to expect the unexpected and to never, ever cry.
This vibrant tour of a macabre world reveals an urban funeral culture
where photo-screened memorial t-shirts often replace suits and ties and the dead
are sent off with a joint or a fifth of cognac. And like
Fun Home and
the books of Thomas Lynch,
Nine Years Under offers readers an
unbelievable glimpse into an industry in the backdrop of all our lives."
(Over the Counter is a regular feature at A Bookworm's World. I've sadly come to the realization that I cannot physically read every book that catches my interest as it crosses over my counter at the library. But...I can mention them and maybe one of them will catch your eye as well. See if your local library has them on their shelves!)
What book caught my eye this week as it passed over the library counter and under my scanner? 
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