Funeral Makers

Funeral Makers
Author: Cathie Pelletier
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2014-05-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1402294832

"A crazy, rollicking whoop of a book, written with a poet's sensibility and deeply wacky down-home wisdom."-Lee Smith, author of The Last Girls A century after the impulsive McKinnon brothers set out to tame the Canadian wilderness and instead landed in Mattagash, Maine, their madcap legacy reigns supreme. It's 1959, and Pearl and Sicily McKinnon have gathered to plan a funeral for Marge, their older sister dying from the rare disease beriberi, thanks to her eccentric diet. Pearl, who skipped town with big-city dreams only to marry a funeral director, soon clashes with the long-suffering Sicily, who herself is coping with an unfaithful husband. To make matters worse, Sicily's teenage daughter is lusting after the town's blackest sheep, a ne'er-do-well twice her age. Brimming with darkly quirky humor and irresistible spunk, The Funeral Makers explores the inescapable ironies of American life and family dynamics and captures the spirit of a world that is as once familiar and quickly fading from view.

The Funeral Makers

The Funeral Makers
Author: Cathie Pelletier
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2014-05-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1402294824

"A crazy, rollicking whoop of a book, written with a poet's sensibility and deeply wacky down-home wisdom."—Lee Smith, author of The Last Girls A century after the impulsive McKinnon brothers set out to tame the Canadian wilderness and instead landed in Mattagash, Maine, their madcap legacy reigns supreme. It's 1959, and Pearl and Sicily McKinnon have gathered to plan a funeral for Marge, their older sister dying from the rare disease beriberi, thanks to her eccentric diet. Pearl, who skipped town with big-city dreams only to marry a funeral director, soon clashes with the long-suffering Sicily, who herself is coping with an unfaithful husband. To make matters worse, Sicily's teenage daughter is lusting after the town's blackest sheep, a ne'er-do-well twice her age. Brimming with darkly quirky humor and irresistible spunk, The Funeral Makers explores the inescapable ironies of American life and family dynamics and captures the spirit of a world that is as once familiar and quickly fading from view.

The One-Way Bridge

The One-Way Bridge
Author: Cathie Pelletier
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2013-10-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1402280742

"Cathie Pelletier is one of my favorite novelists, and she's at the top of her game with The One-Way Bridge."—Wally Lamb, author of She's Come Undone In her highly anticipated new novel, acclaimed literary master Cathie Pelletier returns to Mattagash, Maine, the beloved New England town where it all started. Welcome to Mattagash, the last town in the middle of the northern Maine wilderness. The road dead-ends here, but Mattagash's citizens are fiercely proud. Yet this simple town connected by a single one-way bridge is anything but tranquil. While neighbors bicker publicly over trivialities such as offensive mailbox designs and gossip about suspicious newcomers, they privately struggle to navigate deeper issues—scandals, loss, failed ambitions, the scars of war...and a mysterious dead body in the woods. With her trademark wit and keen eye for detail, Pelletier has assembled an unforgettable cast of endearing and eccentric characters, from scheming mailmen and peeping toms to lovesick waitresses and loggers whose underhandedness belies their ingenuity. The citizens of Mattagash will make you laugh and cheer for them as they stumble into one another's lives and strive to define themselves in a changing world that threatens to leave them behind. The One-Way Bridge is an extraordinary portrait of family, loneliness, and community—and the kinds of compromises we all make in the name of love. Praise for The One-Way Bridge: "The One-Way Bridge is the novel Cathie Pelletier fans have long awaited. Her Mattagash, Maine, is one of the most fully realized fictional locales I've ever visited, it's geography as vivid and precise as any actual place, its citizens as real and compelling as our own friends and neighbors."—Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls "In her new book, Cathie Pelletier's brilliantly drawn, true-to-life characters break your heart and make you laugh at the same time, a rare talent indeed."—Fannie Flagg, author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café

Passed On

Passed On
Author: Karla FC Holloway
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2003-09-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780822332459

A personal and historical account of the particular place of death and funerals in African American life.

Sin Eater

Sin Eater
Author: Megan Campisi
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2020-04-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1982124121

“For fans of The Handmaid’s Tale...a debut novel with a dark setting and an unforgettable heroine...is a riveting depiction of hard-won female empowerment” (The Washington Post). The Sin Eater walks among us, unseen, unheard Sins of our flesh become sins of Hers Following Her to the grave, unseen, unheard The Sin Eater Walks Among Us. For the crime of stealing bread, fourteen-year-old May receives a life sentence: she must become a Sin Eater—a shunned woman, brutally marked, whose fate is to hear the final confessions of the dying, eat ritual foods symbolizing their sins as a funeral rite, and thereby shoulder their transgressions to grant their souls access to heaven. Orphaned and friendless, apprenticed to an older Sin Eater who cannot speak to her, May must make her way in a dangerous and cruel world she barely understands. When a deer heart appears on the coffin of a royal governess who did not confess to the dreadful sin it represents, the older Sin Eater refuses to eat it. She is taken to prison, tortured, and killed. To avenge her death, May must find out who placed the deer heart on the coffin and why. “Very much reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale…it transcends its historical roots to give us a modern heroine” (Kirkus Reviews). “A novel as strange as it is captivating” (BuzzFeed), The Sin Eater “is a treat for fans of feminist speculative fiction” (Publishers Weekly) and “exactly what historical fiction lovers have unknowingly craved” (New York Journal of Books).

Flirting at the Funeral

Flirting at the Funeral
Author: Chris Keil
Publisher:
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2012
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780957315501

The evening breeze is fragrant with the scent of grilled lobster and designer sun-block. Two German girls in starched white uniforms, buttoned up as tight as Barbie dolls, are serving champagne. Dave Leaper sips his drink and dreams of death and vengeance. At a clinic in Southern Europe, a group of young filmmakers are recreating the songs, the slogans, and the idealism of the years of revolution, while an old man, mummified by wealth and power, watches them and pays the bills.

Furniture-Makers and Consumers in England, 1754–1851

Furniture-Makers and Consumers in England, 1754–1851
Author: Dr Akiko Shimbo
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2015-12-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0754669289

Covering the period from the publication of Thomas Chippendale’s The Gentleman and Cabinet-Makers' Director (1754) to the Great Exhibition (1851), this book analyses the relationships between producer retailers and consumers of furniture and interior design, and explores what effect dialogues surrounding these transactions had on the standardisation of furniture production during this period. This study examines the role of pattern books and their readers; the construction of taste and style through negotiation; and daily interactions through showrooms and other services, to reveal the complexities of English material culture in a period of industrialisation.