The Undertaking

Michael Hind's first book, The Undertaking, is the saga of the Ward family and its oldest son Donald (D), who finds himself holding together the family undertaking business during the Second World War in Britain. They must deal with death on a professional level, yet are as human and flawed as anybody else when dealing with the loss of one of their own. The book opens on a funeral and is told dramatically through flashbacks, where we learn of the losses and regrets that have brought them to this place, and of those family secrets they bear together that may save them. A sort of D. H. Lawrence meets Six Feet Under. Filled with flashes of humour and steeped in the history of the era, The Undertaking is a well-written portrait of a strained family learning to put itself back together.