When product designer Greg Holdsworth discovered his timber-loving father-in-law buried in a coffin of plastic handles and printed fake woodgrain, his reaction was less grief than affront - a badly made object, a final dishonesty dressed up as respect. Leave No Trace is the story of what he did about it, and of the decade it cost him.
Part entrepreneurial memoir, part environmental expose, part meditation on mortality, it follows a single stubborn idea- an honest coffin - as it grows into a company, a cause, and a vehicle for change. Holdsworth is candid and funny about a funeral trade struggling to escape Victorian legacies: exploding caskets, mercury-laden fillings, and the unlikely path from an unknown New Zealand design project to recognition at the Smithsonian. When the values he'd fought for begin to slip away, he walks - a dark cloud with a silver lining of reflection and creativity.