"As the body gets weaker, the spirit gets stronger," Linda Kinnamon repeatedly tells her patients. Being a hospice nurse she spends her days caring for and visiting the terminally ill. But in the pre-dawn hours, as her patients near death, they occasionally pay her a visit instead.

Whether it's perfume drifting through a room or a touch on the shoulder, the strength of spirit displayed at the end of life is as unique as the individual. Alchemy of the Afterlife is a memoir of life AFTER death based on Linda's childhood as an orphan combined with her adult experiences as a...