The Undertaking, Thomas Lynch's last book, had him rolling around small -town Michigan in his 'Dead Wagon', dispensing funeral services to a couple of hundred local inhabitants and poetry to a slightly smaller number. In this companion volume, he emerges as more than an undertaking bard. Catholic, former altar boy, Rotarian, fisherman, ex-drunk, divorcee and single parent: could Thomas Lynch be a cat-hater as well? In fact, he hates 'one old, lazy, gray she-cat' with a passion.

All these facets of the dismal trader are in play in this unusual and entertaining collection of essays. He fishes for salmon in cold rivers with his son, and rakes over incandescent coals of failed marriage-counselling with his former wife. At times, he appears to be hanging out a few