My Life with Corpses

Wylene Dunbar blends a sharply defined reality with a soaring, surreal leap of imagination in this story of an enigmatic narrator we know only as Oz, who was raised on a Kansas farm by a family of corpses.

Since she was rescued by an iconoclastic neighbor named Winfield Evan Stark, now long dead, Oz has stayed far away from her childhood home. However, Mr. Stark's grave has recently turned up empty — occupied only by a pristine copy of Oz's narrative of her early life, entitled "My Life with Corpses." Oz, a professor of philosophy, returns to help find his body, hoping to receive the message she knows he is trying to send her. As she waits for two amiable workmen to dig up a neighboring gravesite to see if Mr. Stark might have switched resting spots, Oz reveals the peculiar details of her life and shares her hard-won experience in detecting and avoiding the living corpsedom that has befallen her family and so many others around her.

Oz recognizes and escapes a life of being dead by the narrowest of margins. Her story is both a triumph and a cautionary tale, revealing how life can seep treacherously away but also showing us how it can be restored again. Disturbing and compelling, poignant and funny, My Life with Corpses is narrated with an irresistible combination of intellect, irony, and outright sorcery. Indeed, if Samuel Beckett had been born in Kansas, this is the book he might have written.

"Overwhelming in its beauty, emotional force, and uniqueness." Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything is Illuminated

"Wylene Dunbar's evocative prose, her sense of humor and her deep wisdom make My Life with Corpses a rewarding journey — for the heart no less than the mind." Steve Yarbrough, author of Visible Spirits

Wylene Dunbar, born to a Kansas cattleman and a painter, received her Ph.D. from Vanderbilt and her law degree from the University of Mississippi. She has taught philosophy and practiced law. She is also the author of the award-winning novel Margaret Cape. A longtime resident of Oxford, Mississippi, she currently lives in Nevada City, California.