Photo credit: Faye Snowberger Slowe

A unique, funny, and vivid cast of characters populates this heartfelt, and quintessentially Southern coming-of-age novel.

Deborah Wiles is the award-winning author of one other novel, Love, Ruby Lavender, an ALA Notable Children's Book, a Children's Book Sense 76 Pick, and a New York Public Library Book for Reading and Sharing. Ms. Wiles is the recipient of the 2004 PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Judges' Citation

In her ten years, Comfort Snowberger has attended 247 funerals at her family's funeral home in Snapfinger, Mississippi. Comfort knows a thing or two about death, or so she thinks until Great-great-aunt Florentine drops dead in the vegetable patch and relatives gather to bury her. In direct, sometimes hilarious, and often moving prose, Deborah Wiles introduces us to the remarkable and remarkably eccentric Snowberger clan, including Dismay, Funeral Dog Extraordinaire, and takes us on a journey that explores loss, love, and all the messy complications of life.