A Troubled Guest: Life and Death Stories

A focused personal and ethical examination of life in the face of death, by one of our most acclaimed essayists

“Nancy Mairs writes knowingly, even lovingly, about a subject most of us seek to avoid: death and its essential place in life. Her gripping meditations . . . both comfort and provoke with their spiritual strength and hard-won wisdom.” —O Magazine

“The ten essays in Nancy Mairs’s A Troubled Guest . . . radiate the truest kinds of insight about life, illness, death, and above all, love.” —Elle Magazine

“Through these evocative and often affecting essays, Mairs charts a territory that defines the corporeal and the spiritual, delineating as much about how we live as how we die.” —Publishers Weekly

“In clear, unaffected prose that quickly establishes —along with her candor—an intimacy with the reader, Mairs begins by explaining her feelings toward her own impending death. . . . Not self-help by any stretch, but it will be of interest to anyone recently touched by death.” —Kirkus Reviews

On Ordinary Time:

“A conversion from good-girl spirituality to something much deeper and darker. . . . A remarkable accomplishment. . . . A relentlessly physical writer, as fiercely committed to her art as to her spiritual development.” —Kathleen Norris, The New York Times Book Review

On Carnal Acts:

“Eloquent and remarkable. . . . I closed Carnal Acts feeling a hundred times more prepared for whatever perils and joys lie ahead of me.” —Barbara Kingsolver

Nancy Mairs is author of seven books, including Waist-High in the World (Beacon / 7087-4 / $14.00 pb), Ordinary Time (Beacon / 7057-2 / $18.00 pb), Voice Lessons (Beacon / 6007-0 / $11.00 pb), Carnal Acts (Beacon / 7085-8 / $11.00 pb), and Remembering the Bone House (Beacon / 7069-6 / $12.95 pb). She lives in Tucson, Arizona, with her husband, George.