Title: A prayer for the dying
Description: Set in leafy Friendship, Wisconsin, just after the Civil War, A Prayer for the Dying opens harmlessly on a languid summer day; only slowly do events reveal themselves as sinister, bloom gently into a shared nightmare, as one neighbor after another succumbs to a creeping, always fatal disease. Our sole witness to this epidemic is Jacob Hansen, Friendship's sheriff, undertaker, and pastor, a man with a large heart and conscience.

As the disease engulfs his town, breeding hysteria, Jacob must find a humane way to save those he loves, short of calling a full quarantine and boarding up the sick in their houses. And what of the tramps slipping nightly through the tinder-dry woods, and the spiritualists from the city camped on the edge of town with their charismatic leader, Chase? Who will bury the dead properly, if not Jacob?
Subjects: Wildfires, Families, Epidemics, Bereavement, Fiction, United States, Despair, United States Civil War, 1861-1865, Diphtheria, Veterans, History, Diphtheria -- Fiction, Family, Epidemics -- Fiction, Bereavement -- Fiction, Wildfires -- Fiction, Despair -- Fiction, United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Veterans -- Fiction, Friendship (Wis.) -- Fiction, Fiction, historical, United states, history, civil war, 1861-1865, fiction, Friendship, fiction, Veterans, fiction, Wisconsin, fiction, Large type books, Fiction, historical, general
Places: Friendship (Wis.), United States
Time periods: Civil War, 1861-1865