02636cam a2200385 i 4500 574473252 TxAuBib 20220706120000.0 190829s2019||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2019285610 9781496713681 trade paperback 1496713680 trade paperback TxAuBib rda Skenandore, Amanda, author. The Undertaker's Assistant [PB] / Amanda Skenandore. New York, NY : Kensington Books, [2019] 326 pages ; 21 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Includes discussion questions. "Set during Reconstruction-era New Orleans, this new work from the acclaimed author of Between Earth and Sky 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 soirées 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."--Front flap. 20220706. African American women political activists Fiction. Undertakers and undertaking Fiction. African American women political activists. Undertakers and undertaking. New Orleans (La.) Fiction. Louisiana New Orleans. Bildungsromans. Fiction. Historical fiction. Historical fiction. Bildungsromans.