{"id":1876,"date":"2015-01-14T13:58:43","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T18:58:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cecilesune.com\/?p=1876"},"modified":"2018-12-09T21:22:44","modified_gmt":"2018-12-10T02:22:44","slug":"undertakers-daughter-kate-mayfield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cecilesune.com\/undertakers-daughter-kate-mayfield\/","title":{"rendered":"The Undertaker’s Daughter by Kate Mayfield"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The Undertaker’s Daughter by Kate Mayfield<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Undertaker’s Daughter<\/em> is the true\u00a0story of Kate Mayfield’s unusual childhood. The first 13 years of her life, she lived in a funeral home in a small town in the South of Kentucky. Frank, her father, was an undertaker, and death was a big part of their lives. When a body was brought to the funeral home, the kids were not supposed to make any noise, so there was no talking, singing, arguing or running in the house for a few days. Kate was introduced to death at a young age,\u00a0but she tried to live as normal a life as she could.<\/p>\n

The Undertaker’s Daughter<\/em>\u00a0has many colorful characters, and the story is really compelling. At the end of certain chapters, the author writes a few paragraphs, called “In Memoriam”, where she talks about the death of a particular person because she knew the deceased, or because the circumstances were unusual. I found this to be a nice touch, and a great way to remember these people. Moreover, the book deals with serious subjects. As the story takes place in the 1960s, segregation was very much present with a marked separation between colour and classes. Jubilee, the small town where Kate lived, was a God-fearing place, and the consumption of alcohol was still considered a crime. The book also deals with mental illness, as Kate’s older sister was later diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder. \u00a0Of course, I also loved the literary references to Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe. However, I found that sometimes it was hard to tell Kate’s age as there was no way of keeping track of the passage of time, and I would have liked to know at what stage of her childhood she was when some things happened. In addition, I would have loved to know more about the presence Kate sometimes felt when a body was laid out in the funeral home’s chapel. She only goes over this briefly. Overall though, this was an interesting and thought-provoking read, and I highly recommend it.<\/p>\n

The Undertaker’s Daughter<\/em> was sent to me for free in exchange for an honest review.<\/p>\n

Fun facts about the author and the book:<\/p>\n