Evacuation Plan

Book excerpt: Welcome to the world of hospice where no one talks about the weather or other trivialities. Enter Matt, a fledgling screenwriter who volunteers to work with the terminally ill in exchange for a good plot for his next script. He meets the people who work, die and mourn in this world of last moments. In the novel-in-stories style of Tim O'Brien's [i]July July[/i], O'Connell's characters in [i]Evacuation Plan[/i] reveal themselves in poignantly unfolding stories: the gambler who played a risky game involving his wife and his ex-con father, the mortician who was an unwed father-to-be, the daughter.