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Set during Reconstruction-era New Orleans, and with an extraordinary and unforgettable heroine at its heart, The Undertaker’s Assistant is a powerful story of human resilience—and of the unlikely bonds that hold fast even in our darkest moments.
“The dead can’t hurt you. Only the living can.” Effie Jones, a former slave who escaped to the Union side as a child, knows the truth of her words. Taken in by an army surgeon and his wife during the War, she learned to read and write, to tolerate the sight of blood and broken bodies—and to forget what is too painful to bear. Now a young freedwoman, she has returned south to New Orleans and earns her living as an embalmer, her steady hand and skillful incisions compensating for her white employer’s shortcomings.
Tall and serious, Effie keeps her distance from the other girls in her boarding house, holding tight to the satisfaction she finds in her work. But despite her reticence, two encounters—with a charismatic state legislator named Samson Greene, and a beautiful young Creole, Adeline—introduce her to new worlds of protests and activism, of soirees and social ambition. Effie decides to seek out the past she has blocked from her memory and try to trace her kin. As her hopes are tested by betrayal, and New Orleans grapples with violence and growing racial turmoil, Effie faces loss and heartache, but also a chance to finally find her place . . .
REVIEWS
“Skenandore paints New Orleans and its people with such fine strokes that it’s hard to believe she didn’t somehow transport herself back in time to do her research. As a result, the reader is walking the streets and entering the homes of the dead right along with the characters. Wielding her words with nuance and compassion, Skenandore doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable topics, pulling the reader forward with each page. Skenandore’s talent shines brightest in her ability to demonstrate hope while recognizing that the presence of hope doesn’t mean the absence of challenges and injustice…a timely and timeless truth.”
—Jennifer Klepper, USA Today bestselling author of Unbroken Threads
