Funeral Home: A Novel
by Franklin G. Hempel
$18.95 hardcover, 176 pages
Published: June 2003
ISBN 1880849-62-3

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After a childhood of poverty and tragedy, eighteen-year-old Marcus Reel takes a job in a small Texas town's funeral home, a setting that opens human lives, recently ended or not, to close examination. His coming-of-age experiences in the funeral business and elsewhere inexorably reshape his attitudes and values.

In his friendship with a fellow employee, an older black man named Willie, Marcus finds both a world-wise counselor and the most worthy father figure of his young life. The mortuary's owners and staff, in fact, become a type of surrogate family, and Marcus lives in the first real home he has ever known, even if it is a funeral home.

But in the end Marcus, like most young men, feels the need to leave. Will he be able to find his way out of Guadalupe City and away from the river that separates the "good" and "bad" sides of town, the river that has always symbolized for Marcus the divide between success and failure? Can he cross his personal Rubicon?