The Undertaker's Assistant

This is an excellent post-Civil War story about a woman who’d been enslaved as a child and then learned the trade of embalming from a Northern soldier. Back in New Orleans, she comes to grip with her past and learns a lot about herself and others. In some ways, it’s a tough read but in others, it’s a celebration of a coming into herself. There’s not a lot of sugar-coating of the Reconstruction South.