Hallo, Hallo dear hearts!
As you might have seen recently, one of the stories I was looking forward to reading was entitled “The Undertaker’s Assistant” which deals with the realities of working in the mortuary arts in the 19th Century. Except for whichever reason I had trouble connecting into the story despite finding a lot of lovely compliments to give the author as she truly brought Reconstruction America to life alongside the hidden histories of mortuary sciences.
Here is an excerpt from what I shared earlier on the blog tour:
Initially, when I first started reading the story, I felt hooked inside it – as it had such a clever rhythm and delivery; settling you immediately into Effie’s shoes and giving you a firm understanding of the surroundings she was about to embrace as the newest embalmer to work in New Orleans. Even her back-story was quite remarkable as she was taken in by a soldier and taught a trade she could use in the field as much as she could lateron in life as a profession. She was unique amongst her peers and she had a skill many would flinch to even study much less master.
Sometimes the hardest person to convince of your confidence is yourself – yet, Effie didn’t let people sway her that easily from her confident demeanor. Even if the words they spoke towards her were questioning and unkind, she refuted their sting by merely stating facts and keeping herself on the other side of their snark by not reacting to it directly. Effie is an unusual sort of woman – at the time of the Restoration (the years shortly after the Civil War) wherein most freedwomen might seek for work in industries without a taboo attached to them, Effie found she has a passionate calling to the mortuary arts. She’s an embalmer and bent on convincing her new employer that she not only has the brains for the job but she has the passion to do the job right.
I will say, Skenandore doesn’t gloss over the grittier bits of New Orleans during the Restoration – considering the conditions of the streets, the living quarters and how there was a disparaging difference in how people lived on different streets throughout the city’s different quarters and neighbourhoods – paints a strong picture towards what you could expect to find if you walked these streets yourself during this period of time. She also took us closer inside Effie’s own life – rather than expanding too far afield into New Orleans or even the timescape of when this book is set. There are background passages and the overlays of the political scene concurrent to the toils of how Effie must find her own sense of purpose as an embalmer in a world not yet prepared to treat her as an equal.
It was this focus on the mortuary arts which inspired me to direct the conversation I had with her about her lead character Effie & the research she put into the novel itself. I found her responses wicked fascinating and I truly loved delving ‘behind-the-book’ to see how it was written & what inspired her choices in bringing this particular story to life.
I might not have connected with Effie in the way I had hoped but I was intrigued by the mortuary focus of the novel and how this in turn, brought representation to Historical Fiction about a part of everyday life that is not oft featured. I am hoping my readers & the visitors on the blog tour will find this as much of an intriguing subject to discuss as we did ourselves.
Be sure to brew your favourite cuppa & enjoy the conversation!
The Undertaker's Assistant
by Amanda Skenandore
Set during Reconstruction-era New Orleans, and with an extraordinary and unforgettable heroine at its heart, The Undertaker’s Assistant is a powerful story of human resilience–and of the unlikely bonds that hold fast even in our darkest moments.
“The dead can’t hurt you. Only the living can.”Effie Jones, a former slave who escaped to the Union side as a child, knows the truth of her words. Taken in by an army surgeon and his wife during the War, she learned to read and write, to tolerate the sight of blood and broken bodies–and to forget what is too painful to bear. Now a young freedwoman, she has returned south to New Orleans and earns her living as an embalmer, her steady hand and skillful incisions compensating for her white employer’s shortcomings.
Tall and serious, Effie keeps her distance from the other girls in her boarding house, holding tight to the satisfaction she finds in her work. But despite her reticence, two encounters–with a charismatic state legislator named Samson Greene, and a beautiful young Creole, Adeline–introduce her to new worlds of protests and activism, of soirees and social ambition. Effie decides to seek out the past she has blocked from her memory and try to trace her kin. As her hopes are tested by betrayal, and New Orleans grapples with violence and growing racial turmoil, Effie faces loss and heartache, but also a chance to finally find her place.
Places to find the book:
ISBN: 9781496713681
Also by this author: The Undertaker's Assistant
Published by Kensington Books
on 30th July, 2019
Published by: Kensington Books (@KensingtonBooks)
Converse via: #HistoricalFiction, #HistFic or #HistNov
as well as #TheUndertakersAssistant and #HFVBTBlogTours
Available Formats: Trade paperback and Ebook
I am most fascinated how you elected to pull us through a Historical thread of perspective into the mortuary arts – what first motivated you to explore this field and industry through this particular lens and how did you develop the initial idea into a character who was passionate about embalming?
Skenandore responds: A few years ago, I came an across article in The New Republic titled “Who Owns the Dead.” In it, the author explores the increasing distance modern funerary practices place between the living and the dead and compares that to earlier American practices.
The intimacy and continuity of care our forbears practiced with the dead intrigued me. The article also mentioned how the rise of embalming in American coincided with the Civil War. Family members wanted a way to bring loved ones killed in battle home for burial. I knew I wanted to set my second novel during the era of post-Civil War Reconstruction, so the profession of undertaking seemed like the perfect intersection of these two interests.
Through your research, how many women did you discover were embalmers during Effie’s lifetime and how hard was it for them to enter into the field? I know this was touched on a bit in the novel itself but I meant from the historical records or notes, stories left behind, what can you share with us about any of the living persons who lived her life?
Skenandore responds: A challenge in writing historical fiction, especially from a woman’s perspective, is finding voices in the historical record to help shape your characters. During my research, I found mention of female embalmers, but usually only a sentence or two thrown in at the end. A few women also worked as embalmers…and the like.
Undertaking was often a family business. Children would apprentice from their parents (usually their fathers). Wives and daughters sometimes attended funerals as paid mourners and performed other ancillary work, but they did occasionally learn the trade of embalming too.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any letters or a diary written by such women in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. So I had to take what I’d read about the experiences of women working in other male-dominated professions and extrapolate those experiences to Effie, namely lower wages and the patronization and incredulity these women faced.
The mortuary sciences have evolved and re-developed themselves over the years – they were always a bit adjacent to the morgue and ran concurrent with medical examinations; what did you singular feel was the greatest juxtapositions between this time period of the science and today’s contemporary practices?
Skenandore responds: The single greatest difference was the understanding of the spread of disease. Germ theory was not widely understood or accepted during Effie’s time. Wearing gloves and washing hands weren’t common practice.
From a non-scientific perspective, I’d say the greatest difference between Effie’s time and today is the location where mortuary work is performed. Most undertakers in the 1870s performed all their services in the home of the deceased. The concept of funeral homes was still a few decades off.
Being a freedwoman, Effie had her own personal adversities – not just in self-identity and seeing herself in a measure of equality amongst other freedmen and women, but in society at large. How did you approach writing the class separations and the rise of the voices of whom are shown in the story to help cause the change for seeking personal and civil liberties and freedoms for all persons rather than a select few?
Skenandore responds: To write these voices, I read letters and speeches written by the Southern politicians and activists of the era. I wanted to get a sense not only of their language and cadence but also the way they articulated their hopes and challenges. Some of these I found in books, others at archives in New Orleans.
Newspaper articles were also a great resource. The Louisianian, for example, was a weekly newspaper put out by the great African-American politician P. B. S. Pinchback. Other papers, like The New Orleans Picayune, had a more conservative bent but were useful in to glean the perspective of those less supportive of racial equality.
Despite being a dramatic Historical narrative with a Feminist portal of entrance, I also considered this to be quasi-political and on point with certain topical insights which stem from cross-viewing History with Modern eras. Was this your intention or did it naturally develop in the background as you wrote the story? What were your favourite reflective moments which anchoured these observations?
Skenandore responds: Part of what I love about historical fiction is its relevance to today. At its best, it’s more than just dalliance in the past, but an examination of topics that resonate with modern life. That being said, I try not to be too heavy handed with my writing. I want my readers to draw their own conclusions and absorbed what’s relevant to them. When I write, I certainly have a sense of what seems topical to me, but I let it grow in the background.
One particularly reflective moment for me surrounds Tivoli Circle, the small park where Effie meets Samson Greene, the man who will draw her into the political movement of the day. In 1884, eight years after the book is set, a large monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee was erected and the park became known as Lee Circle. Two years ago in 2017, as I was writing the story, this monument was finally taken down.
Of all the minor characters, which one did you feel surprised you the most and which one challenged you the most?
Skenandore responds: Tom surprised me the most. When I outlined the story, he was a very minor character, someone I created as a contrast to Samson. But as I wrote, his importance grew, and so too did my fondness for him.
The minor character that challenged me the most was Mr. Whitmark, Effie’s employer. His character arc is really important to the story, but so much of it happens off the page. I wanted the reader to understand, at least tacitly, how he became the man he is at the end, but I didn’t want it to overshadow the more important and central story of Effie.
What do you think is harder – to write a story set during a pivotal point in history, to write a composite character oa living person or persons or to create a wholly original character in a believable period of history with resourced nuance to bring their life to a reader’s imagination?
Skenandore responds: All of these have their challenges. When writing about pivotal moments in history, many readers come to the book with a steadfast understanding and opinion, so it can be difficult to find a fresh perspective.
When writing a living person or historical figure, the writer is constrained by the known facts of that person’s life. Wholly original characters and settings offer more freedom, but sometimes, without a historical anchor, it can be hard to craft a vivid and believable narrative. I prefer to write original characters in established, if overlooked, settings and eras.
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Similar to blog tours where I feature book reviews, as I choose to highlight an author via a Guest Post, Q&A, Interview, etc., I do not receive compensation for featuring supplemental content on my blog. I provide the questions for interviews and topics for the guest posts; wherein I receive the responses back from publicists and authors directly. I am naturally curious about the ‘behind-the-scenes’ of stories and the writers who pen them; I have a heap of joy bringing this content to my readers. This also extends to Book Spotlights & Book Blitzes which I choose to highlight which might have content inclusive to the post materials which I did not directly add a contribution but had the choice whether or not to feature those materials on my blog.
{SOURCES: Book cover for “The Undertaker’s Assistant”, book synopsis, author biography, author photograph of Amanda Skenandore, the tour host badge and HFVBTs badge were all provided by Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours and used with permission. Post dividers badge by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination. Tweets were embedded due to codes provided by Twitter. Blog graphics created by Jorie via Canva: Conversations with the Bookish and the Comment Box Banner.}
Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2019.
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