Ever wonder what happens after we die?  It’s a heavy question, and one that I choose not to think about all too often for the simple reason that we can never really know the answer until we die.  Maybe we are just gone, maybe our spirits live on, or maybe the devout believers in God will at last reach that final destination: Heaven.  In A Brief History of the Dead, Kevin Brockmeier takes a stab at the afterlife.  He creates a city, The City, where the dead exist only for as long as the living remember them.  It isn’t Heaven; it isn’t Hell; it’s just a place where the dead get a second chance at living their lives the way they wished they would have the first go round, for however brief a time they are allotted. [Read more...]