Near the Exit: Travels with the Not-So-Grim Reaper

"This book's journey to spiritual places near and far is worth taking." -- Library Journal, starred review

Lori Erickson travels to "grim" locations at home and abroad and explores death through the lenses of other cultures.

After her brother died unexpectedly and her mother moved into a dementia-care facility, spiritual travel writer and Episcopal deacon Lori Erickson felt called to a new quest: to face death head on, with the eye of a tourist and the heart of one who is grieving and facing mortality.

Blending memoir, spirituality, and travel, Near the Exit examines how different cultures past and present have confronted and still confront death, from Egypt's Valley of the Kings and Mayan temples, to a Colorado cremation pyre and Mexico's Day of the Dead celebrations, to Maori settlements and tourist-destination graveyards. Erickson reflects on mortality--the ways we avoid it, the ways we cope with it, and the ways life is made more precious by accepting it--in places as far away and exotic as New Zealand and as close and "mundane" as the nursing home up the street.

Throughout her personal journey and her travels, Erickson helps us to see that one of the most life-affirming things we can do is to invite death along for the ride.

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