Kris Radish · 2006 · road

Kris Radish's 2006 novel. Annie Freeman dies of ovarian cancer at fifty-six having already arranged, paid for and booked her own funeral - a cross-country one, with her ashes in a pair of red sneakers and five women who barely know each other appointed as pallbearers and told where to scatter her.

1. 1
   Sonoma

   A UPS package arrives at Katherine Givens's door containing a pair of red high-top sneakers full of her oldest friend's ashes, a note, and instructions to telephone four women she has mostly never met.

2. 2
   Albuquerque

   The pallbearers assemble - Katherine, Laura, Rebecca, Jill and Marie - five women who have nothing in common except Annie, and who are about to spend a fortnight finding out what that actually means.

3. 3
   Florida

   South, and the pattern of the funeral establishes itself: a place that mattered to Annie, a handful of ashes, and someone waiting who knew her - and five strangers who are steadily becoming something else.

4. 4
   Manhattan

   The city where Annie's life turned, and the stop the reviews all mention - the women dancing in an airport terminal, telling each other things they have not told anybody, and being watched by people who want in.

5. 5
   Seattle

   North-west for the last of the ashes, and the secret Annie left them, which none of them has worked out yet - and by now the funeral has stopped being a funeral and become the thing she actually intended.

6. 6
   Sonoma

   Home to the house the package came from, five women who arrived as strangers and are leaving as something Annie planned from her deathbed - which is either sentimental or exactly right, depending on the reader.