Piercing the veil

Consider the topic of death. It’s not polite to discuss at a dinner party. It’s dreaded, and in many cultures, greatly feared. To all those things, author Judith Fein says phooey. The Santa Fe author and inveterate traveler has written How to Communicate With the Dead: And How Cultures Do It Around the World, which explores, in detail, that gauzy intersection between life and after life. Plumbing her personal experiences, as well as the beliefs and practices (she calls them “life ceremonies”) in the dozens of countries that she’s visited, Fein attempts to cut a path — for some readers — through disbelief into something less resolute and perhaps more hopeful. “Communicating with the dead is a shimmering, private, healing act,” Fein writes, “that can ease and transform loss and resolve confusion and conflict.”