Mrs. Steffy: Our Mother, the Mortician

When Florence Steffy's husband died in 1937 she was left with four children, almost no professional skills, and no license to continue the family's funeral business. In an era when people believed that a woman's place was in the home, she decided to go to embalming school and carry on the work her husband had begun. Doris Steffy lovingly chronicles her mother's journey from homemaker to funeral director in this moving memoir.

"It is my wish that this book will give renewed hope to those who have lost a loved one, a better understanding to those who have not suffered such a loss, and a new dimension of courage to those who have allowed fear to keep them from realizing their greatest potential," writes Doris. "But most of all, by setting my mother's tenets down on paper, I hope they will come to share her great faith in the resiliency of the human spirit."