American afterlife : encounters in the customs of mourning / Kate Sweeney.

Includes bibliographies and index.

What happens after someone dies depends on our personal stories and on where those stories fall in a larger tale--that of death in America. It's a powerful tale that we usually keep hidden from our everyday lives until we have to face it. American Afterlife by Kate Sweeney reveals this world through a collective portrait of Americans past and present who find themselves personally involved with death: a klatch of obit writers in the desert, a funeral voyage on the Atlantic, a fourth-generation funeral director--even a midwestern museum that takes us back in time to meet our death-obsessed Victorian progenitors. Each story illuminates details in another until something larger is revealed: a landscape that feels at once strange and familiar, one that's by turns odd, tragic, poignant, and sometimes even funny.

American ways of death -- Gone, but not forgotten -- Dismal trade: Sarah Peacock, memorial tattoo artist: under the skin -- The cemetery's cemetery -- Dismal trade: Kay Powell, obituary writer: the doyenne speaks -- The last great obit writers' conference -- Give me that old-time green burial -- Dismal trade: Oana Hogrefe, memorial photographer memory maker -- The house where death lives -- Dismal trade: Lenette Hall, owner, The urngarden: The business at the back of the closet -- With the fishes -- Dismal trade: Anne Gordon, funeral chaplain: funerals are fun -- Death by the roadside.

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