A debut novel about a young girl at the center of the secret world of professional mourners, where women are trained extensively and paid handsomely to attend the funerals of strangers. Mem is a wailer, a professional mourner hired to cry at funerals. One of the few remaining American girls in this secret, illegal profession, Mem hails from a long line of mourners, including her mother, a legendary master wailer hired for the most important funerals in her hometown of Philadelphia. Though Mem is to eventually become a renowned wailer herself, she at first struggles with her calling. She is a girl who cannot make herself cry, and though her mother loves her fiercely, she must use ancient, emotionally abusive, cultlike rituals to train Mem to weep. When Mem emerges as the greatest wailer that the profession has ever seen, her infamy brings with it unwanted attention, especially from the authorities. Interweaving poetic prose and artifacts spanning six thousand years and seven continents, Open Me is an utterly original novel about mothers and daughters, dark underworlds, and the play between fact and fiction.

About Sunshine O’Donnell

An award-winning poet, essayist and educator, Sunshine O Donnell teaches experiential workshops in creative writing, visual art, and quantum physics to underserved children in poverty-stricken schools and youth residential facilities throughout Pennsylvania. Through The Coffeehouse Project, a mobile-classroom program O Donnell founded in 1994, she has published hundreds of literary magazines for underserved adolescents and abused and abandoned children. O Donnell lives in the Germantown section of Philadelphia with her husband. Open Me is her first novel.