AMERICAN AFTERLIFE

Someone dies. What happens next?One 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.What 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.American Afterlife by Kate Sweeney reveals this world through a collective portrait of Americans past and present who find themselves personally involved with death