FINAL ARRANGEMENTS

An extremely funny debut novel, set mostly within the confines of a funeral home that hugs the shoreline of bad taste without actually running aground.

Had he been born about 20 years later, Casey Kight would have been a Goth—as it was, in 1974, he was just plain weird. Orphaned at ten, when his parents died in a plane crash, Casey wore a black suit to school (which may have been why he never found a girlfriend) and for good luck carried the key to a funeral parlor with him everywhere he went. On his 21st birthday, he was hired by the Morton-Albright Funeral Home in Angel Shores, Florida, and began work as a mortuary apprentice. His boss, Jerry Stiles, was blunt in his assessment: “There are only three types of men working in the funeral trade: those born into it, those married into it, and those drawn into it. It’s the latter type that gives me pause.” Casey was drawn all right, but he’s not morbid—he’s a natural. Soon he is living at the home as well as working there (much of their business comes in after-hours, you see), and Jerry is fixing him up with his daughter Natalie (who likes to bite people and keeps a photo album of, well, corpses). Apparently old Colton Albright, who owns the business, put a clause in his will leaving everything to the youngest member of the family with a male heir, so Jerry sees an opportunity for his daughter and Casey to get busy. Fast. Because Colton’s got one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, as they say in the trade. But there are other problems, too, not the least of which is the Jacob Funeral Trust, a conglomerate that is buying up every independent funeral home in the South and has Morton-Albright in its crosshairs. Is there any chance of a normal life for Casey? Or will his weirdest dreams come true?

Fast, funny, and remarkably good-natured: You’ll die laughing.