All these duties also compete with his duty as a husband and father and his human instincts. As preacher, he is responsible for taking care of the spiritual needs of both the dead and the living. As undertaker, he is responsible for taking care of the physical bodies of the diseased deceased, whose numbers increase with time. As sheriff he is faced with the task of not only protecting his town, but, joined with his role as undertaker, preventing the diphtheria from spreading elsewhere. Hansen's roles combine to make us wonder if he should have been named Job, beset as he is by travails and tribulations. But Friendship is on the verge of two crises of Biblical proportions - a possible diphtheria outbreak and a raging fire in a tinderbox summer. He is not only the sheriff, he also serves as the town undertaker and a preacher. Jacob Hansen is a Civil War vet who now resides with his wife and young daughter in Friendship, Wisc. In the brilliant and disturbing A Prayer for the Dying, Stewart O'Nan brings an Old Testament feel to post-Civil War Wisconsin. In fact, the best-selling book of all time - the Bible - is built on these themes. These have been themes of literature for centuries, if not from the first time humankind told stories.
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