Don’t be afraid—of life of death. Of all the dead voices.

The voices of the dead – speaking of their lives, their hopes and dreams – echo through this book. In vivid, tender, thought-provoking pieces, in prose of wry humour and others bordering on anger and indignation, Danny Morrison celebrates the lives of ordinary people whom he has known and celebrates the indomitable human spirit that sustains us through our darkest moments.

The focus shifts from the tragic, long-drawn-out death of Danny’s beloved sister to the violent killings of two of his closest friends, from the suicide of an unhappy, lonely woman, to the last days of a young Canadian soldier writing from the trenches of the First World War, and finishes with Morrison’s travels through Portugal and Spain in 2024 as he reflects on what he has learnt from the dead, about how to live, how to forgive and how to love.