The Good Death

In 2005, Ann Neumann left her job in New York to care for her father who had been suffering from non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. She became a full-time caregiver--cooking, cleaning, and coordinating medications with hospice for three months in her hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. When her father died, she was undone by the experience, by the grief and visceral quality of death. This caused Ann to ask, Was her father's death a good death? Do others die this way? Is there a best way to die? The Good Death is the result of more than six years of hospice work, research, and examination into these questions and more. Neumann brings us intimate and historically contextualized portraits of the bishops, bioethicists, activists, prisoners, lawyers, nurses, and patients who are shaping the way we die in America.