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The Dead Hand Book is a memorial to mortality and the ancestral liaison with death through quiet and sweetly-macabre short stories.The Dead Hand Book is a memorial to mortality and the ancestral liaison with death through quiet and sweetly-macabre short stories. The collection of fables is inspired by the manner those long gone have had their memories engraved onto slate and marble stones with the cadence of an old Folk song or Murder Ballad. Tales of warning, the deepest loves honored by surviving paramours and the indifferent cruelty of life in the 17th-20th century are all recorded in the Stories From Gravesend Cemetery. The purpose of this book is to educate the casual cemetery wanderer about how to read the old stones they pass by and to excite the #deathpositivity movement enthusiast or morbidly curious. This book aims help honor those who have come before us by opening the door of understanding the strange records inscribed in old cemeteries; many of those interred below having only that record of their life existing on a crumbling stone. The stories are short and often open-ended to allow the reader to contemplate their interpretation of the endings, maybe even their own mortality. (Much like the way Edward Gorey crafted his short stories.) Modern attitudes towards death have become sodden with superstition, misinformation and fear; this book’s goal is to illuminate how those of the near past embraced, cared for, and honored death as an obvious part of life. Not long ago art was very much an integral part of funerary celebrations such as elaborate Memento Mori carvings on ancient gravestones and the hair jewelry of the Victorians. Those relics are celebrated in The Dead Hand Book.
About the author
Lady Sara Richard is an Eisner and Ringo Award-nominated artist living in New Hampshire. She is the illustrator of Greek Mythology: The Gods, Goddess, and Heroes Handbook (Simon & Schuster), The Ghost, The Owl (Action Lab Entertainment), and The Royal Book of Oz (Clover Press). She has also illustrated over 100 comic covers for publishers such as IDW, Marvel, DC Comics, ONI Press and has had her artwork in the pages of British Vogue, Vanity Fair, WIRED, and the World of Interiors. Sara is a member of the New Hampshire Old Gravestone Association and volunteers her time as half of The Graveside Ladies, a mother/daughter team of gravestone preservers and recorders. She has spoken at the Salem Daughters of Darkness Festival on her conservation work and #deathpositivity outreach via her webcomic, The Wicklow Skulls. Sara is the 10th Great Granddaughter of Margaret Scott, a victim of the Salem Witch Trials and the 26th Great Granddaughter of Elenor of Aquitaine. As a history and genealogy enthusiast, Sara studies and collects antique funerary artifacts in the hopes to open her own Memento Mori micro museum someday and maybe care for a stray ghost or two. Her Ladyship title comes from owning two small conservation plots in Scotland, a place that greatly influences her artwork and symbolizes her interest in conservation work.
