What's it like to work in a mortuary? In this unconventional memoir, Carla Valentine—a curator, pathology technician, and "death professional"—looks back on ten years training and working as an Anatomical Pathology Technologist, where the mortuary slab was her desk. As Valentine tells stories of those years, she demystifies the procedures and practices of this unlikely profession. Along the way, she ponders our attitudes towards death, shedding light on what the living can learn from dead, and assessing the toll that the work can take on the living souls who carry it out.