The Book of Resting Places: A Personal History of Where We Lay the Dead

A roving elegy, a highly personal lens through which to examine the all-too-human tendencies to both honor death and avoid its inevitability Potential blurbs from Jim Shepard, Ander Monson, Alison Deming, Manuel Munoz Lopez comes from a strong literary background: his aunt is novelist/memoirist Abigail Thomas (published by Scribner); his grandfather is renowned science writer Lewis Thomas, author of the classic essay collection Lives of a Cell His work has been published in numerous journals, including being selected for the Notable "Best American Essay" selection He has been a fellow at both Bread Loaf and MacDowell Recent books about dying and the industry surrounding death have been extremely popular (Smoke Will Get In Your Eyes) and this book should be favorably received by that audience as well Lopez has received the following awards and fellowships: Olive B. O'Connor Fellowship in Creative Nonfiction from Colgate University (2015-2016), MacDowell Colony Fellowship (2016), Bread Loaf [...]Work-Study Scholarship (2015), Notable Essay in Best American Essays (2015), Two University of Arizona Foundation Awards Shelf Awareness and Goodreads giveaways ALA Annual and BEA ARCs The book was submitted to Counterpoint through Eula Biss's agent (comparing to to her No Man's Land) and came to him through his mentor Ander Monson, a NYPL Young Lions Finalist and 2006 Graywolf Literary Nonfiction Prize winner (""om's talents are all over the place and frankly off the charts."), thus a potential blurb from Monson is most likely.