Sheri Booker knows a thing or two about death. After witnessing her Aunt Mary's death at the age of 15, seeking an avenue for her grief, she took a job as an administrative assistant in an inner-city funeral home, remaining there for the next nine years. Her experiences within this atmosphere of death and decay form the basis for her poignant and uplifting memoir, Nine Years Under.
Booker's tenure at the Wylie Funeral Home serves as the backdrop for the bigger issues haunting Baltimore's crime-ridden streets. She has a front-row seat to the casualties that result from problems of the 1990s--AIDS, gang violence and the war on drugs. The mortuary becomes a second home, an escape from the heartbreak and despair that lies in wait at home--and a sanctuary for her budding interest in the business of death and for her artistic aspirations. Meanwhile, the mortuary's director serves as a surrogate father and Wylie's son her first adolescent crush.
The faces of death in all their incarnations force Booker to come to terms with her own feelings and fears about the Great Beyond. Her darker moments also become the most poignant; the people around her breathe life into a universe filled with a reality that never seems too far away. "I see dead people" gets new meaning in this engrossing Six Feet Under-meets-The Wire drama that heralds the arrival of a fresh, new storytelling talent. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant