(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

After Kate Mayfield was born, she was taken directly to a funeral home. Her father was an undertaker, and for thirteen years the family resided in a place nearly synonymous with death. A place where the living and the dead entered their house like a vapor. The place where Kate would spend the entirety of her childhood. In a memoir that reads like a Harper Lee novel, Mayfield draws the reader into a world of Southern mystique and ghosts.
Kate's father set up shop in a small town where he was one of two white morticians during the turbulent 1960s. Jubilee, Kentucky, was a segregated, god-fearing community where no one kept secrets, except the ones they were buried with. By opening a funeral home, Kate's father also opened the door to family feuds, fetishes, and victims of accidents, murder, and suicide. The family saw it all. They also saw the quiet ruin of Kate's father, who hid alcoholism and infidelity behind a cool, charismatic exterior. As Mayfield grows from trusting child to rebellious teen, she begins to find the enforced hush of the funeral home oppressive, and longs for the day she can escape the confines of her small town.

Certainly an up-and-down book for me.

The story of Kate's family and her early years was absolutely fascinating. The story of being the daughter of a mortician is compelling enough, but the background of being only one of two white undertakers in a small, segregated Kentucky town adds some real life and sense-of-place to the story-telling. Life in a small town always brings out unique characters and situations - all of which are explored here quite well.

Then, as Kate got older, it sadly started to lose some of that focus for me. The undertaker's business was still there, but it became more about lives and loves of Kate - while I understand that inter-racial romances would have been hugely controversial, the telling of that story was boring. Also, this book touched on some serious topics - alcoholism, mental health and segregation - but I don't think they were dealt with very well. I don't really know if the author still has issues dealing with her father's alcoholism or her sister's mental health problems, but it just felt like it was added to say "Look how weird my family is..."

Overall, this felt like two pieces of non-fiction (the early years, then later on), written like a novel which just didn't come across as well as it should have.


Paul
ARH