Loving the Dead and Gone, by Judith Turner-Yamamoto
Vividly set in a North Carolina hosiery-mill town surrounded by tobacco farms, Turner-Yamamoto's atmospheric novel begins with Clayton's discovery of a young man’s body after a car accident. Unable to forget what he's seen, Clayton becomes involved with the victim's widow, Darlene. With four narrators recounting stories of loss from several different generations, the book is at heart a wide-ranging investigation of the role of death in people's lives, one infused with beautiful imagery and prose.