Rachael Hanel's name was inscribed on a gravestone when she was eleven years old. Yet this wasn't at all unusual in her world: her father was a gravedigger in the small Minnesota town of Waseca, and death was her family's business. Her parents were forty-two years old and in good health when they erected their gravestone—Rachael's name was simply a branch on the sprawling family tree etched on the back of the stone. As she puts it: I

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"In the 1960s, Gary Eustice--along with his five brothers, his high school friends, even the wrestling team if needed--often served as unofficial deputies for Donald Eustice, the local sheriff. If bodies were needed to flush out a criminal from a Midwestern cornfield or to rescue folks after a devastating tornado, Gary was likely on scene with his father. Playing cops is a collection of true short stories about the author's unusual childhood, along...