Jacob Hansen is the town of Friendship’s undertaker, sheriff, and pastor. When the town’s people begin to get sick, it is left to Hansen and the town’s doctor to care for the sick, bury the dead, and do what they can to protect the living. Hansen’s role becomes more and more difficult as it is left to him to make decisions about protecting the citizens of his town while his own family has issues of its own. This is the story of a good man who tries very hard with all his might to do the right thing… if only he knew what that was.

I not only found the writing in this book to be excellent and had a hard time putting it down, at odd moments the story still comes to mind and makes me think of how difficult it must have been to live in Civil War times – for more reasons than one.

If this had been a true story, which after publication and all kinds of hype from Oprah, it turned out not to be, it still would have been unbelievable in parts. For someone who so meticulously remembers the most minute details of one set of circumstances like that horrific scene in the dentist chair, Frey conveniently glosses over other areas like how he managed to recover from his dental experience after only one visit to his dentist, and how his dentist, not described as a specialist in any of the complicated work Frey needed, could perform all that work in one visit. The fact that much of his story could not be verified, and that slowly but surely Frey admitted more and more of his book was fabricated makes me angry. Addiction is no joke; those who deal with it and recover from it should not be mocked. It’s my opinion that’s exactly what Frey did with his fictionalized account that wasn’t even very well done. He insulted the reader’s intelligence.