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The Undertaker's Daughter
The Undertaker's Daughter | Kate Mayfield
The Undertakers Daughter is a wonderfully quirky, gem of a book beautifully written by Kate Mayfield.Her compelling, complicated family and cast of characters stay with you long after you close the book (Monica Holloway, author of Cowboy & Wills and Driving With Dead People). How does one live in a house of the dead? Kate Mayfield explores what it meant to be the daughter of a small-town undertaker in this fascinating memoir evocative of Six Feet Under and The Help, with a hint of Mary Roachs Stiff. 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, where the living and the dead entered their house like a vapor. In a memoir that reads like a Harper Lee novel, Mayfield draws the reader into a world of haunting Southern mystique. In the turbulent 1960s, Kates father set up shop in sleepy Jubilee, Kentucky, a segregated, god-fearing community where no one kept secretsexcept the ones they were buried with. By opening a funeral home, Frank Mayfield also opened the door to family feuds, fetishes, murder, suicide, and all manner of accidents. Kate saw it allshe also witnessed the quiet ruin of her father, who hid alcoholism and infidelity behind a cool and charismatic faade. As Kate grows from trusting child to rebellious teen, the enforced sobriety of the funeral home begins to chafe, and she longs for the day she can escape the confines of Jubilee and her place as the undertakers daughter. Mayfield fashions a poignant send-off to Jubilee in this thoughtfully rendered work (Publishers Weekly).
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Addison_Reads
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Mayfield grew up in a funeral home in the South. In this memoir she explores what that meant, discussing her isolation at times, the uniqueness of her family, and how being surrounded by death isn't necessarily as macabre as you might think.

The way she describes Southern culture, people, and traditions was quite accurate and also entertaining. This book is part Six Feet Under and part Stiff, making it a heartfelt, quirky read that I enjoyed.

BarbaraBB You had me at Six Feet Under! 1y
Soubhiville Sounds right up my alley! Stacked. 1y
43 likes1 stack add2 comments
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PrezBookster
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Loving this book!

Melissa_J I love your nails! 5y
PrezBookster @Melissa_J Thank you! Colorstreet! I will never paint my nails again! 5y
42 likes2 comments
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TommieMarie74
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Such a great paragraph. ❤️

“I was a partner to the quiet and I felt at home... I roamed the shelves alone, the only friend to all the books. Finally, I had thoughts to fill my head other than my own.”

#booklove #introvertlife #libraries #travelbybooks

85 likes3 stack adds
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TommieMarie74
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“It has wings. It‘s the Batmobile.”

The beauty of a child‘s logic. #batmobile #bestquoteever #childlogic

86 likes1 stack add
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peggyriley
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Look at this beauty. Kate Mayfield's new novel, The Parentations, out March 2018 from Point Blank/One World.

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LinaLovesLit
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This one has been on my 'to read' list for a long time.