Religion Update: Confronting the Inevitable

Marketing these titles requires some special handling. Not too many people will be standing in line for a signing, but enough people will be reading (and grieving) in the privacy of their homes. These books tend to find their way to readers--usually in times of need--given as a gift, or sought out for comfort or answers.

Those times of need will dramatically increase in the next decades, slowly but certainly. The baby boom cohort--30% of the U.S. population--is now squarely in the middle of the age-distribution continuum. As this middle-aging wave heads for Social Security and senescence, illness and death are happening more frequently in and all around them. Parents are passing away, friends are getting cancer and, as happens in every age, parents are faced with the untimely deaths of children.

To help people through these times are books that publishers and marketers say will almost never be bestsellers but will almost always be staple sellers meeting a need that never disappears. Every crop of life-cycle books--dealing with significant stages of life, especially its twilight--yields a few that strike a chord and become backlist perennials. And every crop contains a few that break virgin soil, using new angles to attract fresh interest.Books That Serve

"They're not going to be top-selling books, but that's not what we as a publisher want to look at," observes Carol Showalter, director of marketing at Paraclete Press, talking about the advantages and disadvantages of publishing on this topic. The question these publishers ask is, "Are our books serving a purpose in the marketplace?" Showalter and other publishing execs with titles in the field of death and grief know from experience, sometimes personal as well as business, that these books--"portable pastors," Showalter calls them--serve a vital need when people experience loss and grief.

Paraclete's books on these topics complement its titles that focus on prayer. The newest, For Those We Love but See No Longer by Lisa Belcher Hamilton (Apr.), is a pocket-sized prayer book for those in grief, based on the (Episcopal) Book of Common Prayer. Both Hamilton and Gregory Floyd, author of A Grief Unveiled: One Father's Journey Through the Death of a Child (1999), write from personal experience of loss, one hallmark of many of the grief books. Though only two years old, the Floyd title has sold 12,000 copies. "We just keep selling that one," says Gail Gibson in Paraclete's marketing department.

Floyd has appeared as a guest on such television shows as Mother Angelica Live. After these appearances, Paraclete's 16 phone lines begin ringing with calls from "people with grief they cannot get over," says Showalter. "They're out there and they want help."

"There is a need, interest, desire--whatever you want to call it--to cope with questions of death, dying and loss," agrees Charles Moore of Plough Publishing House. Plough identified and tapped the need when emotions rose after the 1999 killings of 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School. Between its hardcover and mass market versions from Plough, Word and Pocket Books, She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall by Misty Bernall (1999)--mother of the 17-year-old Columbine victim--has sold a million copies. Plough is now preparing Be Not Afraid: Life, Death and Eternity (Sept.), a repackaged and expanded version of Johann Christoph Arnold's popular I Tell You a Mystery (1997), stories that address fears about old age, sickness and death.

"We felt it was worth putting new life into it," says Moore, who also reports that Six Months to Live: Learning from a Young Man with Cancer by Daniel Hallock (Feb.) is drawing readers from among hospice workers and others in the field of death and dying. Coping with cancer is also the theme of Walking Through the Waters: Biblical Reflections for Families of Cancer Patients by Nancy Regensburger (Upper Room, Apr.) and Lessons from the School of Suffering: A Young Priest with Cancer Teaches Us How to Live by Jim Willig with Tammy Bundy (St. Anthony Messenger, Apr.).

Jossey-Bass, which numbers both professionals and consumers as its readers, found a book that speaks to both ministers and mourners in Remembering Well: Rituals for Celebrating Life and Mourning Death by Sarah York (Sept. 2000), a Unitarian minister. In nine months, 15,000 copies have been shipped, with minimal returns. "For a book on the tough topic of death and dying from a relatively unknown author, this title has been a home run in the trade," says Mark Kerr, marketing manager. The forthcoming Healing Conversations: What to Say When You Don't Know What to Say by Nance Guilmartin (May 2002) "bridges the gap between spirituality and self-help," says Kerr, offering spiritual and practical coaching for people responding to those who are ill, grieving or in crisis.

Support is also the premise of The Healing Companion: Simple and Effective Ways Your Presence Can Help People Heal by Jeff Kane (Harper San Francisco, Mar). Kane, a physician who has led support groups for cancer patients, gives suggestions and practices in response to the classic question, "What can I do?," asked by loved ones of someone who is ill. John Loudon, Harper San Francisco executive editor, is among those who say that titles like this sell steadily but not spectacularly. "You'll find 10 times as many books on parenting as on death and dying," he says. "I think it's an issue people don't want to face."

Yet they will if it's presented in a certain way. Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom (Doubleday, 1997), a chronicle of Albom's college teacher's decline and death, has been a fixture on bestseller lists for three and a half years. Loudon points out that, tellingly, the book is never shelved with titles on death and dying.

"The ones that are going to sell the best," Loudon adds, "are probably going to be pretty simple," like Dad Was a Carpenter: A Father, a Son and the Blueprints for a Meaningful Life by Kenny Kemp (HSF, May). Kemp muses on his father's life as he sorts through his father's tools following the older man's death. Kemp's book, which he first published himself and sold out of the back of his car, won the 1999 Grand Prize in the Writer's Digest National Self-Published Book Awards and sold 20,000 copies before being picked up by Harper. Answering Crucial Questions

Often, function--meeting an immediate need, providing answers--helps determine form for these life-cycle books. A number of them are small in format, making them eminently "portable pastors." Question-and-answer is popular, as Surviving Grief: Thirty Questions and Answers for a Time of Loss by A.M. Brady Reinsmith (Judson Press, Apr.) attests. Judson's Miles Ahead: Devotions for Older Adults, edited by Carol Spargo Pierskalla (July), is aimed at seniors, a big market for devotionals, and features large typeface and a roster of senior contributors from diverse Christian traditions.

Providing ritual to confer sacredness and meaning is another aim of life-cycle books. Sacred Dying: Creating Rituals for Embracing the End of Life by Megory Anderson (Prima, Apr.) speaks to the families of the dying. Anderson, a former Anglican nun, is head of the nonprofit, San Francisco-based Sacred Dying Foundation. In the same vein from Conari is Nothing Left Unsaid: Words to Help You and Your Loved Ones Through the Hardest Times by Carol Orsborn (Apr.), which uses prayers and poetry to facilitate communication with the ill and dying.

A common question--how do I talk to children about death?--was asked often enough to prompt the Catholic publisher Our Sunday Visitor to develop Your Grieving Child: Answers on Death and Dying by Bill Dodds (Mar.). "We got so many requests from parents for a book that they could read and digest easily and use to provide answers for kids," says Jill Kurtz, marketing director. But parents are not the only readers of the book, which uses a Q&A format with questions kids might ask. Kurtz says a local funeral home is planning to use the book for its clients.

Children may be--and, in the usual order of things, are--adults when they suffer loss, but when death takes a parent, role identity returns to bereaved "adult children." A compendium of stories about the loss of parents, Nobody's Child Anymore (Sorin, 2000) by Barbara Bartocci, is already in its third printing, though it is a relatively recent title. And Sorin, itself a relatively recent imprint entering its fifth season in fall 2001, has more coming up: God Knows You're Grieving: Things to Do to Help You Through by Joan Guntzelman (July), part of a new God Knows series on life-issue topics, and As You Grieve: Consoling Words from Around the World by Aaron Zerah (Aug.), which draws on world religions for words of consolation.

Sorin's parent publisher, Ave Maria Press, has been steadily catering to the perennial need for bereavement books. The Catholic publisher has an extensive list on this subject, as well as books on other life-cycle topics. One of its perennial sellers dates back to 1988, when Praying Our Goodbyes by Joyce Rupp was published. It put Rupp, a prolific writer, speaker and retreat leader, on the map of popular religious authors; 13 years later, there are 179,000 copies of Praying Our Goodbyes in print. With its Finding Your Way series, the publisher is mapping aspects of grieving, with titles including Finding Your Way After Your Parent Dies: Hope for Grieving Adults by Richard Gilbert (1999), Finding Your Way After Your Spouse Dies by Marta Felber (2000) and Finding Your Way After Your Child Dies by Phyllis Vos Wezeman and Kenneth R. Wezeman (Jan.).

Sales and marketing manager Mary E. Andrews says more titles in the series are being considered, based on requests they are receiving. "People are asking us at trade shows, 'Don't you have a book for this situation?'" The series pulls together several titles the publisher already had on its list that had found a small but steady audience.

Answering the question "how do I handle the holidays?" is The Empty Chair: Handling Grief on Holidays and Special Occasions by Susan J. Zonnebelt-Smeenge and Robert C. De Vries (Baker , Aug.), written from personal and professional experience by a psychologist and a minister. Another Baker title, Waiting for Morning: Hearing God's Voice in the Darkness by Cindy Crosby (July), offers answers fresh from nature to the perennial question of how to get through life's hard times. Finding a New Spin

Amy Hertz, executive editor at Riverhead, has been watching interest in the life-and-death question wax, wane and change since she edited Sogyal Rinpoche's The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (Harper San Francisco, 1992). "The level of interest changes," Hertz observes. "It keeps getting deeper and people want to know more; they want to see another spin, another facet of the question of dying. One person can't do the definitive book that's going to answer every question about dying."

Riverhead has just issued the paperback of Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing and Dying by Ram Dass (June), after selling 55,000 copies of the hardcover, published in May 2000. Ram Dass, who has been described as "an uncle to the baby boom generation," is once again its spokesman and advance scout. His best-known work, Be Here Now, came out 30 years ago and sold two million copies. He is now close to 70, and before Still Here was finished, Ram Dass had suffered a debilitating stroke.

"He's at the forefront again," says Hertz. The editor also believes that Good Life, Good Death by Rinpoche N. Gaelek (Oct.) will be on the edge of the curve of interest. Gaelek, a Tibetan lama and expert on reincarnation, views death in the context of reincarnation, answering the questions of what happens, how it happens and where humans go after death. Buddhism itself stems from the encounter by its founder, Gautama Buddha, with old age, sickness and death, so Making Friends with Death: A Buddhist Guide to Encountering Mortality by Judith Leif (Shambhala, Mar.) is also ripe with that tradition's wisdom on death and dying.

New books from academic presses offer the detachment of philosophy, anthropology and other disciplines, provide the close-up resonance of personal experience, or combine them. From University of Notre Dame comes If I Should Die, edited by Leroy S. Rounier (Jan. 2002), essays from a variety of disciplines and scholars in a volume that is part of the Boston University Studies in Philosophy and Religion. Losing Malcolm: A Mother's Journey Through Grief by Carol Henderson (University Press of Mississippi, Apr.) walks the hard road of the loss of an infant son told by his mother, a freelance journalist who recorded and coped with grief by keeping a journal. From the same press, perspectives turn in Coming to Term: A Father's Story of Birth, Loss and Survival by William H. Woodwell Jr. (Sept.), the author's story of the too-early birth of his twins. In When a Jew Dies: The Ethnography of a Bereaved Son (University of California, May), author Samuel Heilman writes as social scientist, observant Jew and bereaved son. A Kabbalistic perspective on death and what follows it is offered in Immortality: The Inevitability of Eternal Life by Rav Berg, published by the Kabbalah Centre.Choreographing the Cycles

Stuart Matlins, publisher at Jewish Lights, suggests that Judaism is an especially rich and eloquent tradition in times of bereavement. "The choreography of Jewish rituals related to death and grieving is much more extensive than in other faiths," he says. Mourning and Mitzvah: A Guided Journal for Walking the Mourner's Path Through Grief to Healing by Anne Brener (1993) is about to enter its second edition, 20,000 copies later. The book also has a significant Christian following, drawn to it by the practical exercises it contains, Matlins adds.

Given this cultural and religious framework and receptive audience, Matlins has especially high hopes for Against the Dying of the Light: A Father's Journey Through Loss by Leonard Fein (May). Editor and activist Fein's 30-year-old daughter died suddenly, and the story probes his grief. Raves for the book include a blurb from Elie Wiesel.

The whole idea of a cyclic structure to life, marked and sanctified by ritual, appeals to adult Jews interested in resuming the education and religious practice they may have drifted from. That's the audience Jewish Lights is targeting and has found with its Lifecycles, Vol. 1: Jewish Women on Life Passages and Personal Milestones, edited by Rabbi Debra Orenstein, and Lifecycles, Vol. 2: Jewish Women on Biblical Themes in Contemporary Life , edited by Orenstein and Rabbi Jane Rachel Litman. The two volumes are approaching 20,000 in combined sales, Matlins says.

Life cycles affect everybody, regardless of race, religion or ethnicity. Matlins is convinced aging is a field that still holds potential for titles and for readers. "We see this as a category to grow, directly related to the aging of the baby boomers," he says, adding, "Of course, people can get older without having any interest in it." But he and other publishers on the topic are hoping the indifferent ones will be the minority. n