A prayer for the dying

Description:

Set in leafy Friendship, Wisconsin, just after the Civil War, A Prayer for the Dying opens harmlessly on a languid summer day; only slowly do events reveal themselves as sinister, bloom gently into a shared nightmare, as one neighbor after another succumbs to a creeping, always fatal disease. Our sole witness to this epidemic is Jacob Hansen, Friendship's sheriff, undertaker, and pastor, a man with a large heart and conscience. As the disease engulfs his town, breeding hysteria, Jacob must find a humane way to save those he loves, short of calling a full quarantine and boarding up the sick in their houses. And what of the tramps slipping nightly through the tinder-dry woods, and the spiritualists from the city camped on the edge of town with their charismatic leader, Chase? Who will bury the dead properly, if not Jacob?

subjects: Wildfires,  Families,  Epidemics,  Bereavement,  Fiction,  United States,  Despair,  United States Civil War, 1861-1865,  Diphtheria,  Veterans,  History,  Diphtheria -- Fiction,  Family,  Epidemics -- Fiction,  Bereavement -- Fiction,  Wildfires -- Fiction,  Despair -- Fiction,  United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Veterans -- Fiction,  Friendship (Wis.) -- Fiction,  Fiction, historical,  United states, history, civil war, 1861-1865, fiction,  Friendship, fiction,  Veterans, fiction,  Wisconsin, fiction,  Large type books,  Fiction, historical, general

Places: Friendship (Wis.),  United States

Times: Civil War, 1861-1865