In Carol Muske-Dukes' novel "Life After Death" a St. Paul woman tells her husband, in a fit of anger, to drop dead. The following day he does just that, collapsing of a heart attack while playing tennis. She is left angry, confused, guilty, and troubled by strange memories, such as the time he proposed to her in New York. Carol Muske-Dukes says when she began writing "Life after Death", she intended to write a satire on the funeral industry in the spirit of Evelyn Waugh and Jessica Mittford. But as she did her research, talking to funeral directors, she began wanting to write a book about what actually happens to people, both living and dead, when someone passes away. Then, as she told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr, things took a bizarre twist. The week she mailed the finished manuscript for publication, her own husband collapsed and died on a tennis court.

This file was digitized with the help of a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).