Katrina and I drove up the winding roads of southern Appalachia, the Blue Ridge Mountains that straddle the border between Tennessee and North Carolina. Here, as in the rest of the United States, the modern funeral industry has seeped in and taken over the rituals and logistics of deathcare. But because of the isolation, religion, and poverty of the area, the creep of industrialized death took longer here than almost anywhere else in the country.
