From Here to Eternity

May 1, 2017

In Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, a New York Times best seller and LibraryReads top pick, mortician Doughty explains how she came to her job and why we should be more accepting of death. Here she considers how other countries approach life's end, chronicling the care of mummies in rural Indonesia and Bolivia's natitas, wish-granting human skulls that puff on cigarettes. Also discussed: new rituals in America such as green burial. Important concerns but also note that the book is pubbing a few weeks before Halloween.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2017
In the follow-up to her well-received debut, Smoke Gets in your Eyes (2014), a mortician delivers a wide-eyed report on burial customs across the world.At the unique funeral parlor she owns and operates in Southern California, Doughty adopts a "younger, progressive" approach to burial protocol. Unwilling to accept the way that the necessity of "deathcare" has evolved into such a commercialized and bureaucratic industry, the inquisitive undertaker presents her globe-trotting experiences exploring and appreciating the eccentric and widely diverse death rituals across international cultures. In offering opposing perspectives that dignify, celebrate, and decorate the body in its expired state, Doughty hopes to do her part in spurring a reform of the funeral industry and to help change the squeamishness of Western attitudes toward death and the sanctity of the sacred burial. Her fascinating tour of rituals contains liturgies that readers will surely observe as rare, macabre, unbelievable, ancient, and precious--sometimes simultaneously. Among them: a Central American body thief validates why he confiscated his grandmother's body from a hospital; a cremation via community open-air pyre in Colorado (the only one of its kind in America), complete with flute and didgeridoo accompaniment; mummification restorations in Indonesia; and the glass encasement coffins of Barcelona: "Glass means transparency, unclouded confrontation with the brutal reality of death. Glass also means a solid barrier. It allows you to come close but never quite make contact." In Japan, where corpses were once perceived to be impure, now they are revered as beloved and their memorialization has been fully ritualized with the aid of technology and innovation. Green, eco-friendly "human composting" methods also have their place in the author's entertaining and thought-provoking narrative. Grimly enhanced by the artwork of Blair, these observances demonstrate how to diminish the stigma associated with death, burial, and eternal remembrance. Death gets the last word in this affably written, meticulously researched study of funerary customs.

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Starred review from October 2, 2017
Mortician Doughty (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes) catalogues rituals and cultural practices surrounding death from all over the world in this fantastic memoir, which is intended to “help us reclaim meaning and tradition in our own community.” Doughty, a mortician who doesn’t abide by typical American funeral protocols of embalming quickly and upselling products, relates practices—glass display cases in funeral homes in Barcelona, natural (casket-free) burials in Los Angeles, a mummified family member hanging out in an Indonesian living room for years before being buried— that will inspire readers to reconsider familiar rituals surrounding death. Doughty also explores the increasing corporatization of death and the growing popularity (and carbon footprint) of cremation. With humor and snappy descriptions, she also gleefully punches holes in Western misconceptions and prejudices concerning death rituals in other countries, as when a travel guide snubbed as a “ghoulish spectacle” the intricate, beautiful bamboo cages used in Bali for decomposition. Doughty’s skillful book will encourage debate on philosophical and moral preferences for posthumous care. Agent: Anna Sproul-Latimer, Ross Yoon.

January 1, 2018

Doughty, founder of the Order of the Good Death, a nonprofit organization that advocates for natural burial and reducing the stigma around death, describes funereal rituals around the world while stopping to reflect on U.S. practices. In Indonesia, for instance, the Toraja keep the dead at home for several months or years until the funeral. The author also explores the North Carolina's FOREST facility, which composts corpses, and the Crestone End of Life, a Colorado nonprofit that performs open-air cremations. Doughty shares her reverence for the dead while poking fun at our fears ("gross as it sounds, I'd come back from the dead for a Diet Coke"). She forces U.S. readers to confront the secretive and profitable mortuary business and sheds light on cultures that celebrate death. If death is inevitable, she asks, why are we afraid to address it? As the Bolivians look to their natitas (special human skulls), we can look to them for a level of comfort and familiarity with death. "How would your ancestors deal with tragedy?" Probably not with a $10,000 check to take a dead body away. VERDICT Recommend this fascinating and well-written book to fans of Mary Roach's Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.-Pamela Schembri, Horace Greeley High School, Chappaqua, NY

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.