Bookworm: ‘Unclaimed’ – Heroes and angels inside those tales

“The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels”

• By Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans
• c. 2024, Crown
• $30, 315 pages

And now you belong. You’ve signed on the dotted line, joined a new church, book club, service group or savings program. You belong, and you’re ready to help others, meet new people, have new experiences, and feel good about it. Joining can be a great, fun opportunity but, as in the new book “The Unclaimed” by Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans, is belonging forever?

Chances are, you don’t think about it much. Or you do, because you or someone you love is ill and the fact occurs that death may be near. Maybe not today or tomorrow or even this year, but you will die someday. Everybody does eventually but since the turn of this century, up to four percent of Americans did it, leaving behind remains that were never claimed.

To some, that may seem unimaginable. To others who know, it’s daunting: as many as 114,000 people per year are buried without family present. This book is about some of them, an almost-hidden 3-acre cemetery in the heart of Los Angeles, mass graves holding thousands of cremains, and the “efforts to unravel the mystery of [those] unclaimed: Who are they? And why do they end up where they do?”

Prickett and Timmermans follow the story of Bobby, a former veteran who hoped for a singing career but who struggled with homelessness and drug abuse. He had an ex-wife and a son, surely one of them would claim his cremains.

They reported 89-year-old Lena’s health decline as she was forced to move from her hoarded, filthy home. Her friends tried to help her, but in the end, Lena was one of those unfortunate souls who fell through the cracks of society.

David surrounded himself with interesting things and people who loved his stories. Midge lived in a van in a church yard, until her friends took her in and built her an apartment. And Albert and Craig ensured that the dead were given the dignity that life may not have offered them because, “unless every body counts, nobody counts.”

Here’s hoping you can read one-handed. Left or right, you’ll need the other hand to place over your mouth when you’re touched by the beauty and humanity inside “The Unclaimed.”

Indeed, this very premise of this book may stir you. You may approach it with a dozen questions and feelings. Someone was unwanted? Rejected? Left in a numbered box on a shelf for years? It piques your interest as it hurts your heart but authors Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmerman surely don’t leave you that way. Yes, the stories they tell are of people, dead and alive, but you’ll be happy to know that there are heroes and angels inside those tales. The authors also explain their methodology and why they believe such a high number of people die unclaimed.

You’ll be surprised but, alas, probably not too much.

Sensitive readers will be happy to know that there’s no gruesomeness inside this book. You’ll only find dignity in “The Unclaimed” and it belongs on your bookshelf.

“Cloistered: My Years as a Nun”

• By Catherine Coldstream
• c. 2024, St. Martin’s Press
• $30, 352 pages

Something’s missing. Everything’s where it needs to be but something’s wrong. It’s complicated, isn’t it? It makes no sense, you can’t put your finger on it, but something’s missing deep inside you. And in the new memoir “Cloistered” by Catherine Coldstream, finding what’s absent may give you peace – for awhile.

Catherine Coldstream was just 24 when her father died.

He had been her rock, her compass. With the help of his elderly sister, he’d raised her, and his gentle, forgiving presence soothed her. But then Coldstream’s aunt died of cancer, and her father died shortly afterward, leaving her “adrift.” She could find little comfort for either loss, until she met a Dominican nun on her travels late one summer.

“Was the pale radiance from her calling out to me?” Coldstream wondered. Hoping life as a nun might take her closer to Heaven, she began to explore the idea by visiting “monasteries of contemplatives” and a “more active outgoing” place in London before settling on the “radical and ancient Carmelite order .. .” Still, nothing quite fit what her soul needed or wanted. She needed order. She wanted more spartan, more strict.

When someone mentioned Akenside Priority, she knew she’d been called.

And so Coldstream embraced life as a “Bride of Christ,” life in a cold cell of silence, comfort, and secrets that whispered to her every time she entered. She learned where it was permissible to talk, her place in line as she enter a room with others, and how to eat “Little Jug,” a meal of bread and tea in the morning. She learned how to pray, kneeling on a small stool; how to dress in yards and yards of fabric; and how to have visitors through “the grille,” a set of bars that allowed conversation but no physical contact.

And Sister Catherine was happy, until two sisters from another community moved in and were allowed to take over. She was happy – until she began to wonder if she could endure her vocation any longer.

Looking for something deliciously gossipy, even scandalous? You’ve got the wrong book, then, absolutely. Yes, there’s a bit of drama toward the end of “Cloistered,” but the lion’s share of this book is serenely meditative.

Or you could also call it slow, if you wish, because there is no rushing in “The Life.” Author Catherine Coldstream writes of days that begin before dawn and that include very regimented hours, chores, lean meals, worship, silence, and more worship – the latter three parts of which should tell readers most of what they need to know about Coldstream’s story. She describes the desolation and, at times, loneliness despite living with nineteen other woman. It’s a life of joy, but also one of deprivation; of belonging, but also of desperately needing to escape.

Readers who are looking for a flashy memoir will be deeply disappointed in “Cloistered” because it’s about as far from flash as you can get. Conversely, readers who can love the reflective aspect of this book will not want to miss it.

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The Bookworm is Terri Schlichenmeyer. She has been reading since she was 3 years old and never goes anywhere without a book. Terri lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 11,000 books. Read past columns at marconews.com.