I feel grateful to have been able to preserve this history for our family and for anyone else interested in macabre voyeuristic love stories.

A collection of letters by Frank C. O’Connor Jr., compiled and edited with fore and afterwords by Jen O’Connor. Nearly 200 pages of text, transcribed letters, documents, and photographs.

An Albany boy temporarily relocates to New York City and recounts to his fiancée shows at Carnegie Hall, trips to The Empire State Building and visits to the National Casket Company. Anecdotes of sweltering morgues and decomposing bodies in the basement of Bellevue Hospital are interspersed with tenderness and intimate adoration reserved only for those madly in love, veering into veiled ribaldry that would make grandchildren blush.

Life, love, and death entwine as they dream of their future knowing it depends on the passing of others. My Dearest Angel is a glimpse into the life of a young man in 1949 studying to become a licensed undertaker at The Renourd Training School for Embalmers, as seen through the letters he wrote to his future wife of over 60 years.

My Dearest Angel is a collection of letters, photographs, and oral and written family histories passed dwon through the generations and assiduously curated by their eldest granddaughter. It was as if they knew that one day the treasure would be unearthed and their stories finally told.

Read an example of Jen’s writing HERE

Front Cover design by Eric Krans + Jen O’Connor
Printed by Publication Studio Hudson

note about shipping:
Media mail does not have an expected delivery date. Unfortunately Media mail can take several weeks to reach its destination.