No Prisoners: A Novel

An aged trade embalmer discovers a new connection to life. As a husband, he promised his dying wife he’d write their story of love and grief, sweetness, sadness. Twenty—five years later, he may not have a first sentence for the story of their marriage but he does have the start of a loving final chapter of his own.

If sex and the dead, as Yeats instructed, are topics worthy of a serious mind, then Doyle Shields has a very serious mind indeed. His professional work was preparing the dead for...