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Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Aug 12, 2005 by Dennis Lythgoe Deseret Morning News

'The Undertaker's Wife'

By Loren D. Estleman

Forge, $23.95.

In this book, Loren Estleman writes about an undertaker and his enigmatic wife in the harsh environment of the turn-of-the-century American West.

When Elihu Warrick, an influential financier, shoots himself in the head in his private cabin on the Michigan Central railroad, five New York stockbrokers conspire to make his demise seem a natural death. They plan a funeral ceremony with an open casket.

Richard Connable, a well-known retired undertaker, leaves his home in Buffalo and travels to Cleveland to prepare the body for burial. Known as "the dismal trade," Connable's embalming process has been lifted to the status of a respected craft. Over the years, he has prepared the bodies of those brutalized by war, street fights, tavern brawls, ambushes and fires.

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He has also offered his skill to the rich people of San Francisco, the ruffians of the Barbary Coast, to Kansas cowboys and nearly every other group. He believes it is his duty to "dignify the dead."

Left behind on these missions is his dedicated wife Lucy. But in this case of high drama, when America's financial markets are at stake, it is the undertaker's wife who manages to transcend death.

'Dissecting Death'

By Frederick Zugibe and David Carroll

Broadway, $24.95.

Frederick Zugibe is one of the nation's foremost forensics experts, having spent 35 years at Rockland County, N.Y., where he is the chief medical examiner.

His innovations in developing fingerprinting to identify deceased victims of murder have made him a famed expert in courtroom cases around the country. Allegedly, not a single jury has rejected his expert testimony. In fact, Zugibe wrote a forensics textbook that has been used by the profession for many years.

In this book, subtitled "Secrets of a Medical Examiner," he refers to 11 of his most challenging cases, showing how he made important discoveries that initially may sound trivial but eventually proved the cause of death. He discusses his measuring devices and optical instruments, demonstrating how a pathologist determines the hour of death, the weapon used and the killer's escape route.

He also discusses DNA testing, gunshot patterns, dental patterns and X-rays -- and he even gets into the problems he found in the JonBenet Ramsey murder, as well as the O.J. Simpson trial.

'A Sudden Country'

By Karen Fisher

Random House, $24.95.

This book, a historical novel that follows the 1847 Oregon migration, is Karen Fisher's writing debut.

Since Fisher is a horseback rider and has worked as a wrangler, teacher, farmer and carpenter in the West. Currently, she lives with her husband and three children in a one-room cabin on Puget Sound, where she works as an arborist on 10 acres of forest land.

Using the diary of her ancestor, Emma Ruth Ross Slavin, who was 11 when her family joined the Oregon pioneers, Fisher has created the story of James MacLaren, a fur trader whose life is turned upside down in the winter of 1846 when his Nez Perce wife deserts him and his children die of small pox.

MacLaren then meets Lucy Mitchell, who is journeying west with her family. The story progresses as MacLaren and Mitchell's lives intertwine. The emphasis is on love, loss, sacrifice and understanding.

Leisure reading

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Aug 12, 2005 by Dennis Lythgoe Deseret Morning News

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