num_pages: 288
description: In this gripping true story an extraordinary professor who teaches a popular course on death plunges deep into the off-campus hours of her most vulnerable students and shows them how to live. Each year Kean University in Union New Jersey offers an exclusive class called Death in Perspective. Led by Professor Norma Bowe the objective of the class is to develop an understanding of the nature and experiences of the stages of dying death and bereavement. It has a three-year waiting list.But as acclaimed journalist Erika Hayasaki discovers by teaching mortality Dr. Bowe is quietly rescuing students from tragedy. As she takes her students to cemeteries prisons morgues and hospitals she shows how the contemplation of the end can change an adults beginning. Over the course of two years she intervenes with one student and her suicidal mother mentors another with a mentally ill brother and redeems a third from his life in a gang. And in the end the students themselves heal Dr. Bowe herself from the lingering pain of a childhood she has long repressed. On one level The Death Class is about the loss of life; on another level its a celebration of what the human spirit can conquer. Its about how we can survive and learn to live a meaningful life.
language: English
title: The Death Class: A True Story About Life
publisher: Simon & Schuster