Over Our Dead Bodies: Undertakers Lift the Lid

Todd Harra · Kenneth McKenzie

Nov 2021 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Gregory St. John, Brian Troxell, and Reay Kaplan

About this audiobook

With humor and heart, Over Our Dead Bodies does for the undertaking profession what Mary Roach's Stiff did for cadavers, and, like Caitlin Doughty's Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? gives us permission to embrace our morbid curiosity. From the authors of Mortuary Confidential. Not knowing what to do, I sat on the church steps and waited. As the gravity of my failure began to well up in me, I began to cry . . . I HAD LOST THE HEARSE! From a dysfunctional family who turn their mother's wake into a full-blown riot, to funeral crashers looking for free meals, to a horse-drawn hearse taking the dearly departed for the ride of their afterlife, these accounts from actual undertakers will have you laughing, thinking, and gasping in disbelief. A literal graveyard of wild coincidences, slapstick humor, and touching moments, Over Our Dead Bodies explores the lighter side of the dead, the living, and the lone undertaker who has to make it all go as planned-even if it doesn't.

About the author

Todd Harra is the author of several books about the funeral profession. He is a fourth-generation funeral director and works for the family business in Wilmington, Delaware. In addition to being a funeral director and embalmer, Todd is a certified postmortem reconstructionist and cremationist.

Kenneth McKenzie became interested in becoming a mortician at the age of twelve, after his father committed suicide. In 1994 he opened McKenzie Cremation & Burial Services in Signal Hill, California. In 2007 Ken received California's Outstanding Funeral Director of the Year award. He resides in Long Beach.