Sleep Toward Heaven: A Novel [Paperback]

Amanda Eyre Ward (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 2004

Amanda Eyre Ward's debut novel is an intimate portrait of three women whose lives collide during a brutal Texas summer.

In Gatestown, Texas, twenty-nine-year-old Karen Lowens awaits her execution with a host of convicted serial killers on death row. In Manhattan, Dr. Franny Wren, also twenty-nine, tends to a young cancer patient, and resists the urge to run from her fiancé and her carefully crafted life. In Austin, Texas, brassy Celia Mills, a once-vibrant librarian, mourns her murdered husband.

Over the course of the summer, fate pushes these eerily recognizable women together, culminating in a revelation of the possibility of faith, the responsibility of friendship, and the value of life. Sleep Toward Heaven is a luminous story of murder and desire, solitude and grace -- a rare literary page-turner where redemption seems perpetually within arm's reach.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

How do we forgive the unforgivable? First-time novelist Ward explores this question with a delicate blend of compassion, humor and realism. Three women whose lives converge during a stifling Texas summer have followed completely different paths in their 29 years. The horrendous childhood of death row inmate Karen Lowens led her to prostitution, drug abuse and finally murder. She now longs to find peace before her scheduled execution in the Gatestown, Tex., prison. She resists friendship, as "any connection, any tiny strand, will bind her to this world" from which she so wants to be freed. Franny Wren, Karen's prison doctor, is just as afraid to befriend Karen, knowing that she can't save her. She is fragile, having recently run out on her fiance and her life in New York City after the death of one of her cancer patients, a young girl, left her guilt-ridden and emotionally drained. Franny has returned to her childhood home in Gatestown, where she was raised by an uncle after her parents were killed by a drunk driver. Meanwhile, in Austin, Celia Mills, the only first-person narrator of the three, is the widow of Karen's final victim. She has been sleepwalking through life since the murder, and her stabs at joining the living are touching and funny ("Although my mother disagrees, I have moved forward with my life. For example, I've bought a new bikini"). Ward's celebration of human resilience never becomes preachy, sentimental or politically heavy-handed. Her spare but psychologically rich portraits are utterly convincing.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Booklist

Ward's impressive debut novel is a powerhouse of melancholic emotions channeled through the jagged lives of her intricate cast of female characters. Karen Lowen is on death row for the murder of numerous men, all of whom (with the exception of one) she claims to have killed in self-defense. The innocent man who crossed Karen's path on that tragic night has left behind a grieving widow named Celia, who cannot find purpose in a life that is empty of her beloved Henry. Then there is Dr. Franny Wren, a consummate professional dedicated to preserving life--now stoically treating women destined to die behind bars. While Celia and Franny grapple with the weight of their hidden desires and lifelong regrets, Karen faces the cold reality of death row and the inevitable sentence that looms before her. Ward deftly creates a route by which all three women irrevocably touch each other's lives, their sorrow reaching through the darkness like searching fingers on the hand of destiny. Elsa Gaztambide
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (February 17, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060582294
• ISBN-13: 978-0060582296
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (65 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #899,918 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

ABOUT AMANDA
Amanda Eyre Ward was born in New York City in 1972. Her family moved to Rye, New York when she was four. Amanda attended Kent School in Kent, CT, where she wrote for the Kent News.

Amanda majored in English and American Studies at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She studied fiction writing with Jim Shepard and spent her junior fall in coastal Kenya. She worked part-time at the Williamstown Public Library. After graduation, Amanda taught at Athens College in Greece for a year, and then moved to Missoula, Montana.

Amanda studied fiction writing at the University of Montana with Bill Kittredge, Dierdre McNamer, Debra Earling, and Kevin Canty, receiving her MFA. After traveling to Egypt, she took a job at the University of Montana Mansfield Library, working in Inter Library Loan.

In 1998, Amanda moved to Austin, Texas where she began working on Sleep Toward Heaven. She wrote for the Austin Chronicle and worked for a variety of Internet startups. In 1999, Amanda won third prize in the Austin Chronicle short story contest with her story Miss Montana's Wedding Day.

She published Butte as in Beautiful that same year.

In July, 2000, Amanda married the geologist Tip Meckel in Ouray, Colorado.

They spent a summer in New Orleans, Louisiana, where Amanda wrote the short stories The Beginning of the Wrong Novel and Classified.

During that summer, Amanda finished Sleep Toward Heaven, which was published in 2003. Sleep Toward Heaven won the Violet Crown Book Award and was optioned for film by Sandra Bullock and Fox Searchlight. To promote Sleep Toward Heaven, Amanda, her baby, and her mother Mary-Anne Westley traveled to London and Paris.

Amanda moved to Waterville, Maine, where she wrote in an attic filled with books. Amanda's second novel, How to Be Lost, was published in 2004. How to Be Lost was selected as a Target Bookmarked pick, and has been published in fifteen countries.

After one year in Maine and two years on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Amanda and her family returned to Austin, Texas.

To research her third novel, Forgive Me, Amanda traveled with her sister, Liza Ward Bennigson, to Cape Town, South Africa. Forgive Me was published in 2007.

Amanda's short story collection, Love Stories in This Town, was published in April, 2009.

Her new novel, Close Your Eyes, will be published in July, 2011.

Amanda currently writes every morning and spends afternoons with her two young boys.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Late-Night Page Turner, July 15, 2003

By 

J. N Sandell "So many books, so little time" (Maplewood, MN United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sleep Toward Heaven: A Novel (Paperback)

I was forced to stay up late into the night last night to finish this novel. That is to say that I just could not tear my eyes from the page, even after I finally closed this book, I lay awake thinking about it. When a book can do that it deserves the highest rating there is to give (and from a first time novelist no less!)

How do we forgive the unforgivable? That is the question that is at the crux of this well etched novel. This is a novel about women on death row, but just to say that would be selling this book incredibly too short. The story centers around three women: Celia, Franny, and Karen. Their lives become inextricably entertwined during a few short months in the hot Texas summer. All three have dealt with copious amounts of sadness throughout their lives and in the end have managed to work through it with tremendous grace.

This is a compelling read, very vivid, poetic. Ms. Eyre-Ward's style and her characters are memorable, no nonsense and very very real. I look forward to more by this author!! I have read many really good books so far this year, but the hours I spent engulfed in this story and these women's lives were the most rewarding.

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Three Lives Interwined Into One Moving Story, March 11, 2003

By 

Sarah Rocklin (Timonium, MD USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sleep Toward Heaven: A Novel (Paperback)

I opened this book at 8:15 and, immediately caught up, finished it at 10:45, with tears in my eyes. The story of these three women, whose lives intersect during one hot summer in Texas, is gripping and heart-rending. The three pieces of the narrative, shifting from Karen to Celia to Franny, come together with an almost audible snap at the end, leaving you with a cohesive whole that's greater than the sum of its parts.

I look forward to reading the second book from this author.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Provocative and brilliant, March 1, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Sleep Toward Heaven: A Novel (Paperback)

Three very different women --one who is on death row, one who is the wife of one of the victim's, and one who is coming to work at the prison--come to terms with each other--and themselves--during one long, hot, steamy summer in Ward's haunting novel. How do you forgive another? How do you forgive yourself for the choices you made? Beautifully written and just a spell-binding read.