Dottie & the Art of Dying

Dottie Clark is going to die. She isn’t happy about it. 

Dottie’s spent her life as a devoted wife. A devoted mother. And she’s relished every minute of it. When she tragically loses her husband, for years, she yearns for nothing more than to be with him once again. When one day, she finds out that she has terminal cancer and won’t live to see the end of the year, Dottie’s more surprised than anyone that the news sends her spiraling into the throes of grief.

Death comes knocking far too soon, and Dottie finds herself in what appears to be an idyllic afterlife. By an enigmatic figure named Nightingale, Dottie’s told the last thing any departed soul wants to hear: She’s stuck in the in-between, and until she figures out why, she’ll remain there forever. On a quest to move on and reunite with her husband, Dottie’s plunged into a never-ending cycle of the ends of others' lives—like that of a serial killer, a woman with the Bubonic plague, and a sentient virus—exploring the interconnectedness that exists in places we never think to look. 

Told in two parts, Dottie & the Art of Dying follows Dottie’s journey through the end of life and the in-between as she explores love, loss, and coping with grief. In death, she’ll find the answer to the question she’d always been searching for in life: Are we doomed to be forgotten?