This book intertwines the author's personal story of her father's death with the story of her ethnography of a hospice organisation. It is an evocative narrative that seeks to understand and explain the process of communicating with the dying--and their families--and the ways that this communication potentially reinforces and enhances the humanity, life, and sanctity of relationships. The book takes a social constructionist approach to examine communication with and about people with terminal illness, and in so doing, illustrates and explains health communication theories in an understandable, concrete manner.

The thesis of the book is that while some end-of-life communication helps maintain the humanness of the dying person, and with it, the essential relationship between the dying and their loved ones, not all end-of-life communication accomplishes this. Research suggests that hospice helps facilitate the process of treating patients as persons through the way they think about, interact, and communicate with patients. The main focus of this narrative book is to examine and describe the places where hospice staff, patients and families interconnect as persons beyond their social and patient roles.