""Through story, poetry, and insightful reflections, reveals how ritual, community, and the sacred restore the original context of grief."--Provided by publisher"--

Journalist Erica Buist traveled to seven death festivals around the world (Nepal, Madagascar, Indonesia, Sicily, Japan, Mexico, and New Orleans) to understand how other cultures deal with death.

When Diya Burman's best friend Angie dies, it feels like her own life is falling apart. Wanting a fresh start, she joins Slough & Sons - a family firm that cleans up after the recently deceased. Old love letters. Porcelain dolls. Broken trinkets. Clearing away the remnants of other people's lives, Diya begins to see things. Horrible things. Things that get harder and harder to write off as merely her grieving imagination. All is not as it seems with...

The Queen begins with a familiar epigraph "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown"--Henry IV, Part II. The action of the film takes place during the week following the death, on August 31, 1997 of Diana, Princess of Wales. One of its accomplishments, courtesy of adroit use of newsreel and other contemporary footage, is to remind viewers of the deep sadness that surrounded that event. It is also about the divergent and potentially ruinous ways the...