Blood Beneath My Feet : The Journey of a Southern Death Investigator

ADVICE FROM DEAD KINFOLKS -- PAINTING THE TOWN WITH JOE -- JERRY LEE AND ME -- IT'S ALL IN HOW YOU SAY IT -- SOUTHERN MAN -- THE MUSTACHE -- RED BEANS -- HEY, HAVEN'T WE MET BEFORE? -- THE EARACHE -- FORSYTHIA -- GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT -- COLOR PLATES -- LITTLE GODS AND CHOCOLATE MILKSHAKES -- HE WAS YOUR WHAT? -- THE TRAILER PARK SWIMMING HOLE -- EVENTUALLY THE SUN WILL SHINE ON EVERY DOG'S ASS -- HELL YEAH, IT HURT! -- TERMINUS.;A hard dose of Southern reality about life with the dead as told by real death investigator.

Have you ever been locked in a cooler with piles of decomposing humans for so long that you had to shave all the hair off your body in order to get rid of the smell? Joseph Scott Morgan did. Have you ever lit a Marlboro from the ignited gas of a bloated dead man's belly? Joseph Scott Morgan has. Have you ever wept over a dead dog while not giving a shit about the dead owner laying next him? Morgan did. Were you named after a murder victim? Joseph Scott Morgan was.

This isn't Hollywood fantasy—it's the true story of a boy born into the deprivations of a white trash trailer park who as an adult gets further involved in the desperate backdoor sagas of the "new South." No hot blondes here, just maggots, grief, and the truth about forensics and death investigation.

Joseph Scott Morgan became a death investigator with the Jefferson Parish Coroner's Office in suburban New Orleans in 1987, the youngest medicolegal death investigator in the country. During the day, Morgan worked in the morgue, and at night investigated for the coroner. In 1992 Morgan became senior investigator with the Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office in Atlanta. Morgan is now a college professor at North Georgia College and State University, where he teaches a death investigation course based on the national standards which he helped develop. He and his family reside in the Blue Ridge Mountains of north Georgia.