OBITUARY: One woman is dead. Three people are glad.

by Deborah C. Sawyer

When Katelynn Joss returns from France in February 2020 to her childhood home in Toronto, it is not for a family reunion or a happy holiday. Nor is it just to sort out her recently deceased mother’s possessions. Katelynn also finds herself sorting through the mistakes, outrages and deceits of her mother’s life, as she writes the obituary. Alternatively nagged and encouraged in this task by her aunts, Agnes and Yolande, her mother’s surviving siblings, Katelynn sets to work, every word sticking in her throat and stirring up a sandstorm of bitter memories. It takes her several weeks to sort out both the house and the obituary, which is finally published 4 ½ months after her mother died.

But, once the obituary is officially printed in the newspaper, it turns out Katelynn isn’t the only person who is glad her mother is dead. Among the obituary readers are two other people who knew the deceased well and rejoice that Abigail Melinda Joss is finally dead.

Obituary is a story of love, loss, lies, murder, escape and the sordid underbelly of privilege. As a global pandemic rages, each of the three people stuck at home has time to dredge up their memories and put Abigail under the microscope.

262 pages, Paperback

Published June 19, 2022

About the author

I wrote my first novel when I was five, after I learned the alphabet but before I had fully learned how to spell all the words. That's why it begins with a variation on the classic story introduction, as I spelled it 'Wunce apone a time...' (I still have the notebook somewhere; I forget what the story was about!)

Over the years, I wrote on and off. A short story I wrote in high school won a prize in a local competition, another short story I wrote for children was accepted for publication but, as is often the case with publishing, funding fell through before my story could be published.

Practical considerations dictated that, while I was working, I wrote mainly articles in professional journals and eight business books in my capacity as a consultant.

I returned to more creative writing about five or so years ago. I began what became my first novel "To Be Somebody" around 2013 but a relocation and other events delayed its appearance until 2019. I also wrote the screenplay "The Poor Side of Town" that made it to the quarterfinals of the Stage 32 feature film writing contest a few years ago. And I just published my second novel "Ashes to Ashes" in Janaury 2021, and I'm busy on my third.