“Despite the public’s perception, there is no group of service members whose primary task is death notification,” Mr. Sheeler writes. “Just as every marine is a rifleman, expected to grab a weapon and head to the front if called upon, any midlevel ranking marine could also be called to knock on the door.” And it is an onerous responsibility, to say the very least. The acronyms (“NOK” for next of kin) and instructions (“it is helpful if the NOK is seated prior to delivering the news”) aren’t very helpful. Families can react violently in their grief. The sight of officers arriving in their dress uniforms is enough to set off shivers of dread in any military neighborhood.  Major Beck’s utter dedication to his job is one thing that gives “Final Salute” its strong backbone. This is not a maudlin book, despite the endless opportunities Mr. Sheeler had to make it one. Instead it adopts Major Beck’s quiet decency in his conduct and his empathy for people in dire circumstances. “Maybe that’s what hurts me the most,” he says: “that because I’m standing in front of them, they’re feeling as bad as they’re ever going to feel.”  Among the most difficult aspects of Major Beck’s job is to deal with its political implications. “If you don’t feel this loss in some way, I’m not so sure you’re an American, frankly,” he says. “When I hand that flag to them and say ‘On behalf of a grateful nation,’ it’s supposed to mean something.”  But when a chaplain once tried to silence a mother who cursed the president, Major Beck corrected the clergyman. “The best way to handle that situation,” he says, “is not to tell someone what they can or cannot do in their own home.”  This book enters a number of homes and follows their occupants through the grieving process. “Final Salute” is organized through chapters about these individual families. It pays particular attention to that of Lieutenant Cathey, whose pregnant wife refused to leave her husband’s coffin on the night before his burial and slept nearby on an air mattress, protected by a Marine honor guard.  It also follows the family of Army Pfc. Jesse A. Givens, who did his best to express his love to his unborn child. His widow, Melissa, was particularly forthcoming in letting Mr. Sheeler reprint her correspondence with her husband. One love letter she wrote comes back unopened, wrapped in plastic, after Private Givens’s death. It bears a stamp that reads, “Please be advised the contents may contain hazardous material.”  As Mr. Sheeler chronicles the many quiet tasks involved in burying military personnel (“it’s like the names are just floating out there, waiting,” says a man who carves those names into headstones), he does a fine, dignified job of conveying the range of responses to such loss.  There is the anger of Lieutenant Cathey’s mother when anyone tells her she needs closure. (“I politely tell them, ‘How about if I chop off your finger and see if it grows back?’ ”) There is the American Indian ritual that celebrates Cpl. Brett Lee Lundstrom of the Marines as a fallen warrior. There is the Remembering the Brave ceremony, at which the marines who watched Lance Cpl. Kyle W. Burns die in Fallujah, Iraq, on Veterans Day 2004 keep alive the no-frills story of his heroism.  What were his last words? “I’m hit.” His last deed? Ensuring that other marines survived. “Final Salute” shares Major Beck’s conviction that the Kyle Burnses of the Iraq war must be given the honor they deserve.  A Story of Unfinished Lives  Illustrated. 280 pages. The Penguin Press. $25.95.  A version of this review appears in print on , on Page E1 of the New York edition with the headline: Bearing Witness to the Fallen and the Grieving. Today's Paper|Subscribe
Jim Sheeler’s book about fallen military personnel takes one of the great underreported stories of the Iraq war and brings it to light with empathy and quiet decency.