The Undertaker’s Assistant cover art

The Undertaker’s Assistant

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Unlimited access to our all-you-can-listen catalogue of 15K+ audiobooks and podcasts
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The Undertaker’s Assistant

By: Amanda Skenandore
Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

About this listen

"The dead can't hurt you. Only the living can." Effie Jones, a former slave who escaped to the Union side as a child, knows the truth of her words. Taken in by an army surgeon and his wife during the War, she learned to read and write, to tolerate the sight of blood and broken bodies - and to forget what is too painful to bear. Now a young freedwoman, she has returned south to New Orleans and earns her living as an embalmer, her steady hand and skillful incisions compensating for her white employer's shortcomings.

Tall and serious, Effie keeps her distance from the other girls in her boarding house, holding tight to the satisfaction she finds in her work. But despite her reticence, two encounters - with a charismatic state legislator named Samson Greene, and a beautiful young Creole, Adeline - introduce her to new worlds of protests and activism, of soirees and social ambition. Effie decides to seek out the past she has blocked from her memory and try to trace her kin. As her hopes are tested by betrayal, and New Orleans grapples with violence and growing racial turmoil, Effie faces loss and heartache, but also a chance to finally find her place....

©2019 Amanda Skenandore (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books Coming of Age Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Heartfelt War African American Historical Fiction
All stars
Most relevant
I do like a book that teaches me about a period of history I am not overly familiar with, the US Civil War being one of them, There was a likeness to The Bonesetter Woman by Frances Quinn, in that the story followed a strong female character who works to support herself at a time when this was not a common thing, and is not a woman familiar with the ways of men and relationships, and suffers the repercussions of this.
All in all a commendable novel and a very good narration which drew me well into the characters lives,

Interesting female-centric post US civil war read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.