98 Books Like The Obituary Writer

I love this book’s two freedom fighters: the historical Sarah Grimké and the fictional enslaved woman Handful.

It’s the early 1800s in Charleston, SC. Privileged white girl Sarah bucks cultural expectations for women, while Handful fights the cruel slavery system. Sarah repudiates her upbringing in order to support abolition, and Handful stakes everything in pursuit of freedom, “to leave or die trying.”

I loved learning about the Grimké sisters, giants in the abolition movement, and the West African story-quilt tradition, whereby women tell their lives through the art of needlework. This book was transformative for me; Sarah’s and Handful’s transgressive courage has helped me through difficult times of my own. If they could face their obstacles, then by golly, I can face mine.

Years ago, I watched a documentary on the orphan train movement, which took place between 1854 through 1929. Coordinated by the Children’s Aid Society in New York City, amidst the cholera epidemic, an estimated 250,000 children became orphaned and subsequently homeless or abandoned.

The Children's Aid Society devised a plan to transport orphaned children by train to homes in the West to solve the orphan crisis and address the inadequate welfare institutions of the day. Many children were helped, and others became victims of families looking for cheap labor.

This book holds a special place in my heart because I had always intended to write a story about this movement. Then, one day, walking into Barnes & Noble, I saw this book on the best-sellers rack. Needless to say, I was inspired to start writing my own novels and berated myself for not having done so sooner!

I love this book because it has everything, believable, engaging characters, a riveting plot, a vivid setting, and a cause. Larger-than-life Margery O’Hare and lady-like Alice are unlikely friends, but friends they become in this great story.

When I first saw photos of those "librarians on horseback," the wonderful women who responded to Eleanor Roosevelt’s call to take books to the rural poor of Kentucky in the depressed 1930s, I longed to know more. Jojo Moyes gives us lots more. There’s an array of well-drawn characters, but it’s Margery and Alice who drive the story forward, defying the odds to achieve their aims and find men who love and appreciate them.

Yes, it’s a love story, too, and a whodunnit? Perfect!

I recommend One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow for three reasons. First, it’s set in the same general time and place as my novel and depicts many of the hardships that frontier women faced in the second half of the 19th century. It also tells a story about an unlikely but necessary friendship, thematically akin to my novel. And finally, the prose is lovely and a joy to read.

Upon receiving the news that her two young daughters had been killed by a drunk driver, Genevieve Jurgensen didn’t think she could go on, let alone ever write about her loss. Fortunately for us, she eventually found a way to tell this story. Through letters to a friend, she draws us in, circling the pain of that terrible day, musing about the mysterious ways in which loss can coexist with a happy, ongoing life. With its raw and intimate feel, the book is a profoundly moving testimony to the complicated process of healing.

I wanted to know why Michelle Miller, an award-winning broadcast journalist on the CBS Saturday Morning show, yearns to reconnect with her biological mother. She wants her Latina birthmother to recognize her as her own. Questions we both wanted to know: Was she abandoned because her father was married to someone else? Because she had darker skin than her Hispanic mother? Or because her mother’s family disapproved of their daughter being with a Black man despite his being a surgeon and a city councilman? 

Michelle attended Howard University, where she formed tight friendships. Her journalistic career is marked by interactions with famous civil rights movers and shakers. Yet, throughout her life, she missed having a mother and a “normal” nuclear family to belong to. 

Kevin Sessums was the kind of kid who just can't hide it. Too exuberant, drawn to fantasy, costume, theatrical gestures. 

He might disagree, but to me, he seems never even to have been in the closet. Not that he had it easy. There was family trauma. He was bullied by classmates, targeted by older men. His big extended family of certifiable characters in the small-town South was right out of Flannery O'Connor. He asked himself, at thirteen—and I wish I'd had such guts—"Why not just be what everyone expected I was?" There were Blacks and Civil Rights activism intimately close, and young Kevin was equally no-nonsense about the stupidity of racism.

Spoiler alert: he escaped to a life of arts and culture and queer adulthood in New York.

The gold standard of recovery books. I found this gem literally in the gutter when I was homeless. Changed my life by showing me if I could get my shit together, I, too, could write a book about my experience, and, in the process, maybe help someone else who was suffering as well.

I love a good family drama where there’s a found family.

A young reporter is assigned to write the obituary of an alive woman, Mrs. Kip. Mrs. Kip lost her husband, never remarried, and never had children. But she lived what could appear to be a thousand lives as she held different roles and careers throughout her life.

In order for one job/role/calling to end, a part of her had to die. Now, faced with a young blonde who favors her, Mrs. Kip feels as though maybe this is the daughter she never had, the daughter who would listen to the stories, the daughter that might not be family by blood, but family by heart.

This story gave me a lot of “spread the Gospel” vibes, but also reminded me to not sleep on the seniors in our lives. They have a lot to offer, too. 

The first time I read David Rosenfelt’s Andy Carpenter series, I immediately thought that Groucho Marx had moved to North Jersey, gone into law, and adopted a rescue dog. Rosenfelt’s reluctant lawyer hero goes at his oddball cases with a collection of even odder associates. Dry, witty, and a little self-effacing, Rosenfelt’s style brings to life a cast of characters that made me reluctant to put his books down. I started the series with the third book, Bury the Lead, first but quickly caught up. The first book in the series is Open and Shut. Mystery and animal lovers will find a place in their heart and funny bone.