In Lieu of Flowers: A Conversation for the Living - Softcover

"An elegant book whose dark subject matter is lightened by the author's wry and sometimes brazen storytelling perspective. Each story Ms. Cobb tells is rendered with grace and simple honesty... [ In Lieu of Flowers is] a candid collection of tales that lets readers know they aren't alone."
-- The Wall Street Journal

"This little book, at times light-hearted and at times heart-breaking, is, in its own way, poetry....With kindness, understanding, and humor, she tells us stories of friends she has loved and lost. She also tells the stories of people she has never known, but whose tales were told to her by bank tellers and others in little more than chance meetings."
-- The Norwich Bulletin

"Absolutely beautiful in both feeling and in word...manages to communicate great wisdom and truth in unpretentious, hilarious, and heartfelt prose.... Cobb has artfully brought into dialogue a subject still too-often left to linger in silence."
-- NAPRA Review

"Nancy Cobb's meditation on grieving is personal and persuasive -- sustenance for the mind, and the soul."
-- Wally Lamb

"Remarkable...a powerful and moving book."
-- Judith Light

"We are all much too afraid of death and we've got to get over it. Not only because we will die but perhaps more to the point because our friends and loved ones will die, and if we can't discuss death we can neither help nor be helped. A very good way to begin this process is to read Nancy Cobb's gorgeous, indispensable book, In Lieu of Flowers."
-- Kathleen Chalfant, star of the Pulitzer prize-winning play Wit

"There is no wrong way to grieve, Nancy Cobb tells us, but this brave, bright-eyed tale of how she managed to face the deaths of her parents and other loved ones provides a striking model. Written with intelligence, charm, and even humor, In Lieu of Flowers enlivens our awareness that death is, after all, what binds us all together most fiercely."
-- Billy Collins, author of Questions About Angels