Tucker, Clara J.

Don't Touch That Tree

This is the story of an embalmer. In the course of telling the story the reader is allowed into the never seen embalming room. The reader gets first hand knowledge of what an embalmer has to do and endure in order to prepare a dead human body for viewing and burial. The story teller lets the reader into his personal life on a day-to-day basis, and his falling in love with a female embalmer, and his tour of duty as an embalmer in Viet Nam. Although this novel is not intended to be a text book on embalming, the reader will feel that he or she will almost have the training to embalm a dead human body. The actual intent of this novel is to allow the public to understand that even though an embalmer has chosen to seek a career that most people would consider gruesome, an embalmer is indeed just as human as the average person in an average profession. This embalmer wrote this novel as an attempt to show the public, that as macabre as most would think of an embalmer, he has chosen this profession even if it did not provide for his living.