During the hazy summer of 1969, Charles Wilkins, then a student at the University of Toronto, took a job as a gravedigger. The bizarre-but-true events of that time, including a midsummer gravediggers’ strike, the unearthing of a victim of an unsolved murder, and a little illegal boneshifting, play out amongst a Barnumesque parade of mavericks and misfits in this macabre and hilarious memoir of mortality, materialism, and the gradual coming-ofage of an impressionable young man.

"Other writers might spend their entire lives searching in vain for characters so rich and stories so weird as the trove young Wilkins unearthed with a long-handled spade while working in a third-tier Toronto cemetery in the summer of 1969. ... Most of his adventure is purely hilarious ... but despite his considerable art as a humorist, Wilkins's comedy can't help but be serious. ... The result is a note-perfect tune to whistle past the ridiculous graveyard."
—John Barber, Globe and Mail

"[This] strange-but-true memoir ... will fascinate, disturb and most certainly entertain. From a gravedigger's strike to the exhumation of (most of) a corpse, the rogues and oddballs that Wilkins works alongside will both compel and repulse. ... Set against a turbulent era, the cemetery seems to exist outside of time, in a realm of intractable taboo, a curious combination of irreverence and sanctity that Wilkins captures effortlessly. With a deft command of both character and language, Wilkins's story could easily double as an out-there novel, but of course it's all the more engaging for its authenticity. Wilkins distils his bizarre day-to-day into a cohesive narrative and a compelling commentary on the times, a perfect trip for those who weren't able to take off work for the Summer of Love."
—Publishers Weekly

"Although this memoir recounts events that took place in the summer of 1969, when Wilkins worked as a gravedigger for a Toronto cemetery, it reads more like a novel, with colorful coworkers, wacky adventures, and an Animal House–like feeling that there are a few kernels of truth in there, hiding behind the comedy. Wilkins definitely knows how to tell a story, and in the long run, it really doesn’t matter how much of the story is real and how much is tweaked for comic effect.  Like M*A*S*H, Richard Hooker’s novel based on his experiences in Korea, 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.  The author is up front about his alterations to names and locale; clearly, he doesn’t expect us to treat his book like a rigorous autobiography, and so we don’t.  We’ll just sit back and enjoy the show."
—Booklist

"Wilkins’s memoir serves as a fascinating account of his coming–of–age experience as a gravedigger in the summer of 1969. Confronted daily with mortality and the physical and emotional implications of death, Wilkins explores the grim details of working in a cemetery and how the experience ultimately shaped his journey to adulthood."
—Library Journal

"If Raymond Chandler had written a memoir, I could imagine it reading like this. ... Wilkins has worked his factual shockers into a personal narrative as rolling and carefully landscaped as the grounds he tended. ... I don't know how Charles Wilkins escaped my notice until now, but I intend to read as many of his books as I can before I, too, end up in the land of long fingernails."
—Mary Roach,Globe and Mail

"A gem – an irreverent, twisted and occasionally revolting corker ... populated by a wildly entertaining workforce of deeply idiosyncratic substance abusers. ... By the third paragraph in his introductory author's note, he has reeled us in. ... It's the humanity at the core of the book—plus Wilkins' gymnastic prose and laughs aplenty—that really powers this book."
—Toronto Star

"As a young man in the sixties, [Wilkins] fell into a summer job as a gravedigger in a nameless but unforgettable cemetery in Toronto. I'm glad he was paying attention. I'm also thankful that I did not die then, and thus was in no position to be laid to rest by Wilkins' ragged team of drinkers, stoners, and post-Yorick smart alecs. ... Wilkins is a master storyteller, and canny with a punch line. ... If this were a just world, someone would put him on a fat retainer and send him on frequent adventures, because, even when he writes about himself, Wilkins is really writing about us."
—Joe Fiorito, Literary Review of Canada

"[This] leisurely, reefer-tinted narrative is about a young man who's coming of age and gaining access to the (occasionally unlawful) secret practices of the gravedigging trade. ... The collection of oddball characters who surround Wilkins during his escapades consists of a bombastic, literary Italian, the cemetery's first-ever female digger, a drunken boss, a one-armed gardener and a nice smattering of boneheads. Wry and stuffed with zingers ... though not recommended for people with very weak stomachs."
—Toro magazine

"A coming-of-age story set in that mythic summer of '69. ... Wilkins's vividly recalled details establish a sense of the surreal. ... The narrator himself, Charlie, young, naive, easy-going, non-threatening, compassionate, is a trusted follower and a good listener. ... A typical teenaged male obsessed with toking and scoring, his summer has to be described as a success. Yet he is also the Fool, the Trickster, who makes us burst into laughter in spite of ourselves. These archetypal aspects to everyday characters lift this workplace memoir into the realm of literature."
—Prairie Fire

"Does the thought of working in a cemetery send chills down your spine? It should. In Charles Wilkins' candid new memoir his employment as a gravedigger at a suburban Toronto cemetery in 1969 is relayed with no stone left unturned."
—Metro

"Charles Wilkins has extracted every morsel of black humour out of what most would consider a pretty sombre occupation. ...Wilkins lays the ghosts of a part-time job he had as a teenager to rest with impeccable humour. ... Wilkins becomes privy to the cemetery's sordid secrets, and is both intrigued and horrified at the tricks of the undertaking trade. ... Readers will never look at cemeteries the same way again after this utterly fascinating and unforgettable memoir."
—Scene Magazine (London, ON)

"Wonderfully written, a memoir of not just any summer job but that of the gravedigger. It didn't inspire Wilkins to become a mortician but it did sharpen his eye, leading to some pretty nifty observations, fluid descriptive writing and a sense of dark humour that is doubly delicious."
—The Sun Times (Owen Sound, ON)

"Maybe we all had memorable summers when we were 19, but it takes a writer as skilled as Charlie Wilkins to refine his memories and record his younger self's impressions with so little intrusion from his present day self. Whenever we are in danger of thinking, without questioning, that the old days were good days, we should think of Wilkins and his summer of commuting between the living and the dead."
—Chronicle-Journal (Thunder Bay, ON)