The Undertaker’s Assistant

By: Amanda Skenandore

Narrated by: Allyson Johnson

"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....

©2019 Amanda Skenandore (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Couldn’t

Put it down. Exciting from beginning to end.
Will definitely read more from this author.

Great book

Well written and researched. The narrator had great expression and a lovely voice. The book brought the history of the time into the narrative. I think it would make a great movie.

good story

It has all the feels. It is a historical fiction about a woman trying to find people from her past in post Civil War Louisiana.

Great Book!

Well developed characters and the story was historically accurate. I'm glad the author did not shy away from the cruelty that southern whites inflicted upon melanated people in these times. Bravo Ms. Skenandore! I enjoyed every word.

I wanted more

I would have loved if there were a series of parallel type stories. It was well written.