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In the Land of Long Fingernails

A Gravedigger's Memoir

Charles Wilkins author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Greystone Books,Canada

Published:8th Sep '11

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In the Land of Long Fingernails cover

Charles Wilkins, then a university student, took a job as a gravedigger in a vast corporate cemetery in the east end of Toronto during the hazy summer of 1969. The bizarre-but-true events of that time-a midsummer gravediggers' strike, the unearthing of a victim of an unsolved murder, and a little illegal bone-shifting-play out among a Barnum-esque parade of mavericks and misfits in this macabre and hilarious memoir. Amid relentless gallows humor and the inevitable reminders of what it is, finally, to be human, Wilkins provides an unforgettable insider's view of a morbidly fascinating industry. In the Land of Long Fingernails is a story of mortality, materialism, friendship and sexuality...and the gradual coming-of-age of an impressionable young man.

* Shortlisted for the Trillium Book Prize * Shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour * Shortlisted for the City of Toronto Book Prize "If Raymond Chandler had written a memoir, I could imagine it reading like this..." --Mary Roach, author of Stiff "Reads like a novel... This book feels right; that is, it convinces us unequivocally that this is what working in a cemetery at the end of the swinging sixties must have been like... Just sit back and enjoy the show." --Booklist

ISBN: 9781553658436

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 311g

240 pages