For 16 years I was executive director of a nationally-certified crisis intervention and suicide prevention center in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have also been executive director of three university-run counseling centers and assistant director of a two-county social service agency. Three of my books--"The Last and Greatest Battle" (Oxford University Press, 2015), "The Final Leap" (University of California Press, 2012), and "Building Hope" (Praeger Press, 2008)--are related to this work. My latest book, "The Education of a Coroner," just came out in August 2017 from Scribner.