Funeral Girl

Description

Sixteen-year-old Georgia Richter feels conflicted about the funeral home her parents run--especially because she has the ability to summon ghosts. With one touch of any body that passes through Richter Funeral Home, she can awaken the spirit of the departed. With one more touch, she makes the spirit disappear, to a fate that remains mysterious to Georgia. To cope with her deep anxiety about death, she does her best to fulfill the final wishes of the deceased whose ghosts she briefly revives. Then her classmate Milo's body arrives at Richter--and his spirit wants help with unfinished business, forcing Georgia to reckon with her relationship to grief and mortality.

Emma K. Ohland (she/they) is an author who has been telling stories since before she knew how to write them down. She grew up in the middle of a cornfield in Indiana, but her imagination often carried her away to other worlds. She graduated from Purdue University with a B.A. in English literature. She currently lives in Indiana with her partner, their cat, and their dog. Funeral Girl is her debut YA novel.

"Funeral Girl is a touching debut about ghosts, grief, and the relationships we have with people both living and dead."--Nita Tyndall, author of Who I Was with Her -- "Other Print" (5/1/2022 12:00:00 AM) "Georgia Richter, 16 and asexual, has an uncanny, secret ability: she can wake the dead with a touch and return them to death with a second touch. Her talent is weirdly apposite, since she lives in her family's funeral home, where corpses are always, ahem, at hand. Things become personal when a classmate, Milo, is killed in a hit-and-run accident and brought to the funeral home. Though she hardly knew him when he was alive, she finds herself drawn into his life in death, and they become tentative friends. But what will happen when she discovers that she can't return Milo to death? Unfortunately, Georgia is not always a sympathetic character: she is solipsistic and judgmental, and she treats her best friend, Amy (who is the only out enby in school), badly. There is, arguably, some justification for this, since Georgia is obsessed by death and terrified of dying. Accordingly, give Ohland's first novel high marks for its unusual premise and vivid characterization of its imperfect protagonist." -- Booklist -- "Journal" (8/1/2022 12:00:00 AM) "What a stirring, raw, and brave novel this is, to look directly into our deepest fears and refuse to resolve them! Ohland offers her lyrical hand to share anxiety and grief, and to honor those who experience them. Funeral Girl reminds us that we are all of us fragile and human, but also, that none of us ever have to be alone. An extraordinary debut; an extraordinary new voice."--Saundra Mitchell, author of All the Things We Do in the Dark -- "Other Print" (5/1/2022 12:00:00 AM)