A Death in the Family: Stories Obits Tell

When her daughter died in November, 2013, she was a parent in search of consolation and looking for similarities to her situation. She began to read the obituary column of her local newspaper and although the author of A Death in the Family: Stories Obits Tell read extensively about death of an adult child, she found obituaries the most comforting and kept returning to them. Day after day, she became obsessed and discovered that obituaries were a specific genre in themselves. This book, written within the tradition of social history, follows a decade of obituaries from the point of view of one author and notices the gradual changes in content, context, and style. In clear and precise writing, Donna McCart Sharkey explores and finds the extraordinary within the captivating life stories – the brief biographies and at times, autobiographies – of the newly dead.

Donna McCart Sharkey’ s most recent books are Falling Together: A Family’ s Memoir of Mental Illness and Grief and Always With Me: Parents Talk About the Death of a Child. She is an active contributor to creative non-fiction anthologies and her research has been published in numerous academic journals. Donna grew up in Montreal and now lives in Ottawa.