{"product_id":"american-afterlife-kate-sweeney-9780820346007","title":"American Afterlife: Encounters in the Customs of Mourning","description":"\u003cp\u003eSomeone dies. What happens next?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOne family inters their matriarch's ashes on the floor of the ocean. Another holds a memorial weenie roast each year at a green-burial cemetery. An 1898 ad for embalming fluid promises, \"You can make mummies with it!\" while a leading contemporary burial vault is touted as impervious to the elements. A grieving mother, 150 years ago, might spend her days tending a garden at her daughter's grave. Today, she might tend the roadside memorial she erected at the spot her daughter was killed. One mother wears a locket containing her daughter's hair; the other, a necklace containing her ashes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAmerican Afterlife\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Kate Sweeney\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0820346004\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780820346007\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Georgia Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 03\/15\/2014\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 232\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.95lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.60h x 5.70w x 1.00d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e 12\/23\/2013\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e 02\/15\/2014","brand":"Kate Sweeney","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":44120344264959,"sku":"9780820346007","price":29.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_c1cf11f9-2f1b-4c52-a7ce-b72c066b8578.jpg?v=1687413817","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/american-afterlife-kate-sweeney-9780820346007","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}