Final Arrangements: A Novel - Softcover

Andrew, Miles Keaton; Andrew, Miles

3.97

124 ratings by Goodreads

9780312313623: Final Arrangements: A Novel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312313624 ISBN 13: 9780312313623

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 2003

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Ever since his parents' funeral, Casey Kight felt a comfort and ease among morticians that he knew no where else in the world. He decided right then, at the age of nine, what he wanted to be when he grew up...an undertaker. The day he turned twenty-one, Casey joined the ranks of Morton-Albright, a family owned and operated mortuary, in the small Florida town of Angel Shoals.

Immediately, he felt right at home. He seems to have a gift for embalming. The Morton and Albright families welcome him like the family he never had. The quirky and mischievous Natalie Albright is the girl he's always dreamed of. And within the walls of Morton-Albright, Casey feels a reassuring presence that calms him, like nothing ever has before.

But his happiness will be short-lived if the mortuary falls victim to a rapacious funeral-home giant. With family secrets being uncovered, contested wills, and rumors of illegal funeral practices circling, the lives entwined in this funeral home become filled with intrigue, deception, and, of course, death.

Bringing abundant experience and a fresh wit to the page, Miles Keaton Andrew offers a clever, spirited, darkly humorous first novel, rich with dialogue and full of nuanced characters.

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About the Author:

Miles Keaton Andrew has worked in the funeral trade for over a decade. This is his first novel.

From Publishers Weekly:

Apprentice mortician Casey Kight is reminded that "the first three letters in `funeral' are f-u-n" in this wonderfully bizarre, irreverent and graphic look at the mortuary industry, complete with embalmings, cremations and corpses that snore. Twenty-one-year-old orphan Casey has always wanted to be a mortician. When he hires on as an apprentice at the Morton-Albright Funeral Home and Memorial Chapel in Angel Shores, Fla., he has a lot to learn. Ray ("Don't you just love that new-casket smell?") teaches embalming, Carl teaches the fine art of orifice packing, and the manager, Jerry, wants Casey to marry his quirky daughter, Natalie, so the family will have a male heir to take over the business. Casey quickly decides, to everyone's surprise, that he is going to like all aspects of the job. He likes embalming and other unpleasant procedures, and longs for the day when he is a licensed funeral director. Meanwhile, he deals with a pistol-waving mourner who drops dead in the viewing room, twin mortuary students Morey and Lester (aka More or Less) and a crackpot who goes nuts on a school stage with a box of sheep hearts and a baseball bat. Casey also has to help the owners of Morton-Albright fight a hostile takeover by a ruthless, cut-rate, nationwide funeral home conglomerate. When he and Natalie infiltrate the corporate giant to gather evidence, heads roll (literally). Despite the nonstop references to scatological and other bodily functions, Andrew's debut is a very funny tale of young love and mystery set amid draining tables and suction tubes. Agent, Loren G. Soeiro. (Mar.)Forecast: The popularity of the HBO series Six Feet Under may have whetted readers' appetites for funeral home shenanigans; if so, this is the perfect novel to satisfy them.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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