The Cemetery Tender

Why did Livy ever start talking to the dead? At first, it was all fun and games—pulling weeds from neglected graves, planting flowers, learning about history in a way school didn’t teach. But everything changes when one of the underground residents in the small-town cemetery asks her to set a decades-old misunderstanding to rights. Livy is soon entangled in a web of deceit, bad choices, and thwarted dreams. As she comes face to face with racial prejudice, injustice, forbidden love, and insurmountable heartache, a tragic drama comes roaring back to life, one involving the town crazy lady and her own deceased relatives—one of whom terrified her when alive and another who was the saddest person she’d ever known. With only herself to depend on, Livy must unravel the tangled threads of decisions made years before she was born so the dead can finally rest in peace. Told in multiple timelines and from the viewpoint of all the people involved—dead and alive—The Cemetery Tender is a mix of pathos and humor, a deep look into the not-so-distant past, a study in how far we will go to protect those we love, and a testimonial that everyone—even the dead—deserves forgiveness and a second chance.