Reyna Favis is a local author and has found some success on Amazon with her Zackie series. I picked this series up toward the end because of its connections to a local landmark, and I think some of my issues with the book stem from starting in the middle so to speak. I feel like the author did not leave enough snippets and clues to acclimate the new reader. I didn't realize until Zackie started sniffing something on the table that Zackie was the dog. Now maybe that's because I was a negligent reader-- there is a dog on the cover, but until that point the dog was referred to as a roommate and did behaviors like lay on the bed and travel between the realms of the living and dead. Humans can do those things to... right? I would be very interested to start this series from the beginning because the author has a lot of activity, a lot of characters, and a lot of "past" in this book that I'd like to understand better. The main character, Fia, for instance, has a "dead hand," that I thought might be a reference to a sentient creature like Thing on the Addams Family but then it became clear it was attached to her. So then I thought it was a prosthetic but then she mentions that cadaver dogs can sniff it out, which meant that somehow she really does have a dead hand on her body. I would love to go back in the series and see how that happened. This particular volume of the series features Phillipsburg, N.J.'s Roseberry House and explores the region's relationship with slavery. The author is a past member and supporter of the Phillipsburg Historical Society-- and I purchased her book as part of a fundraising effort for that group-- so she does a magnificent job conveying both history and setting. I did not realize that the author had experience with various types of working dogs and her use of dogs is both educational and entertaining. (One scene/section chronicled what service dog handlers go through and what is legally required of them as public access animals, and I must say that I have mixed feelings about this because 1. the public needs to know more about the "rules" and responsibilities of businesses and animal handlers BUT 2. As someone on the waiting list for a mobility service dog, I do not like seeing any animal masquerade as a service animal. The author wrote one very humorous scene inspired by a Facebook post which led to Zackie licking elevator buttons in front of a woman who did not like dogs. The dog later saved her life and the side character learned her lesson. But in my mind, I saw a working dog masquerading as a service animal and then misbehaving in public.) This book covers a LOT of ground, a LOT of geographic territory and a LOT of relationships. Kudos to the author for tying it all up in the end, I wasn't sure she would be able to. More importantly, again, her use of detail to convey history, dog stuff and cultural differences was stunning. The other minor but difficult issue for me was the book formatting. The book is very thick, in part because the formatting did not follow traditional book spacing and type faces. And the 350+ page book is divided into only four chapters, the first of which is 72 pages long and the second about 100. The chapters of divided into subsections but the way the material is set up makes it very hard to navigate. I look forward to reading more from this author because she's crafted a complex universe where her characters explore a lot more than just helping the dead, they explore the mistakes, foibles and experiences of the living. And when fiction can help the past come back to life, that's never a bad thing.