Customer Reviews

Welcome to Heavenly Heights: A Novel

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Reviewed by Judy Doenges
Sunday, January 12, 2003; Page BW10

Risa Miller's first novel, Welcome to Heavenly Heights is a story of community. In Israel's West Bank, several orthodox Jewish families from America have settled to make aliyah, a return to the land. Among them are Tova and her husband, Mike, who leave their upper-middle-class life in Baltimore for an apartment in Heavenly Heights, hard by the Jordanian border. Tova and Mike and their three children immerse themselves in the lives of the complex's other residents and attempt to adjust to ever-circling army helicopters and bomb searches.

Miller depicts their marginal existence in remarkable prose: The blue Judean sky is like "an eye restraining itself from tears." Miller's fine writing contrasts the emigrants' religious rituals with the stark life outside their homes. There's devotion in almost every moment of the settlers' days; even starting life over in Israel is a sign of religious dedication.

To Miller's credit, the settlers are not homogeneous. Tova's closest friend, Debra, was raised in Appalachia on country music and stories of her absent Jewish father. Now Debra sings twangy versions of spiritual songs. Fiery Sandy has only one child, which makes her an anomaly in the building, and she has difficulty seeing her son for the troubled child he is. Mr. Stanetsky, a Holocaust survivor, is the building's mortgage godfather, a rich immigrant who subsidizes the settlers' payments.

The novel doesn't have a plot per se; instead it charts the settlers' emotional and spiritual adjustments to Israel and to their perceived roles as pioneers. However, what Miller's novel lacks in action is more than made up for by her memorable portraits of people out of sync with both the country they've left behind and with the political reality of their new home.

Judy Doenges is the author of "What She Left Me"; she teaches at Colorado State University.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

Risa Miller's first novel, "Welcome to Heavenly Heights," is a series of vignettes about a group of people living in the same building on the West Bank. The protagonists of this novel are American Jews who have left the comfort and security of their homes for a precarious existence as settlers in a disputed area of the Middle East.

Mike and Tova are one of the couples who make the move. She is a bit skeptical about leaving their comfortable home in Baltimore, but Mike will not allow Tova's qualms to get in the way of his vision for their future. Another settler is Debra, a convert who originally came from Appalachia. She is the daughter of an absentee Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother. Debra loves to sing and her sunny disposition is infectious. Less sunny is Sandy, the mother of an only child, Yossi. Yossi has emotional problems and he is always getting into one scrape or another. Sandy and her husband, Nathan, have their hands full keeping their rambunctious son on an even keel.

Miller's book is not political, nor is it linear. There is no plot to speak of. The author acts as a photographer, taking snapshots of the residents of building number four in Heavenly Heights. We get to know these settlers only briefly and we see them as fallible people, each with his or her own issues, who have chosen to risk everything for their ideals.

Miller has attempted a difficult literary feat, and she does not completely succeed. The book has an unfinished feel, and there are several sections that left me merely puzzled as to what the author was trying to say. However, Miller does succeed in depicting the tremendous personal sacrifices that the settlers made when they chose to live in Heavenly Heights.

While newscasters trumpet the latest statistics from one of the most vied for areas of the world, first time novelist Miller puts very human faces on an often misunderstood way of living. Her perceptions are astute, her prose meticulous, and her powers of observation remarkable.

This is the story of a group of American Jews who leave the United States to make Aliyah - they go to Israel, to a settlement on the West Bank. It is the first year in their new home that Miller traces with artist's eye and abundant heart as she depicts a culture and a faith through their dinners, weddings, births, marriages, adjustments, and mikvahs.

What must it be like, what motivates one to leave the comforts of America for a dangerous place where car and bus bombings are a daily occurrence? Couple that fear with an iffy water system, a tedious, sometimes blind bureaucracy, and construction that often would not pass inspection.

It is a place where worship is familiar, but men bring guns to the shul. It is a land where the sound of dropping bombs echoes throughout. Yet, in the West Bank settlement of Heavenly Heights there can be heard the sound of laughter as friendships are forged and religious faith reigns supreme.

Winner of a PEN New England Discovery Award for this unpublished manuscript, Miller is a deft writer who does a service by sharing the lives of these sturdy souls. "Welcome To Heavenly Heights" is a book to be read and remembered.

- Gail Cooke

This was truly one of the best books I've read in a long time - written by an author who likes her characters! I enjoyed spending time with them, felt like I really knew and understood them. Without fanfare, Miller juxaposes the everydayness of being home with children with the danger of doing that on the West Bank in Israel. With surefooted, evocative writing, she tells us why that makes sense. When do we get a sequel? Debbie Goldhair

Through wonderful character development, Risa Miller has managed to capture a realistic view of life in the settlements and all of Israel. I read the NY Times review of this book before my last visit to Israel and on returning read this wonderful book. The people there are so full of life, so committed and are suffering, but in spite of the suicide murderers, they continue to live life. Mrs. Miller so gracefully captures their zest for life and there fear of what may come.

Whether or not the the main character in a book is sympathetic has no reflection on the quality of the book itself; if the author bothers to indulge in "beautiful descriptions," obviously they ARE important or integral to the story, and any belief otherwise is simply due to a lack of perception or depth of understanding on behalf of the reader/reviewer. I found "Welcome to Heavenly Heights" to be an excellent, lyrical read, its characters and storlyine deeply insightful and educational. Miller's novel is one of depth and meaning, unlike much of the mediocre literature out there today. The "rave" is truly deserved.

I could not follow the story, did not care about the characters, and could not figure out what the point of the book was supposed to be.

a good friend recommended this to me, and i'm glad she did, it was a wonderful read and i look forward to more books from Risa Miller!

To Orthodox Jews, Israel is more than just Moses' Promised Land as it is the soul's home. Living anywhere else is exile regardless of assimilation, equal treatment or standard of living. Though a second or third generation American Jewish family may desire relocation to the Land of Israel, not many will accept the sacrifice especially moving to the dangerous West Bank.

Though she worries about the impact of acclimation especially on her young daughter to a land where the family's Camry could be wired to explode, Tova and her family move to Heavenly Heights, a small community on the West Bank. She and most of her neighbors in the apartment building attend a synagogue filled with soldiers leaving weapons alongside prayer books. Though containing doubts as strong as that which kept Moses out of the Promised Land and missing suburban America, Tova and the other residents try to follow the Mitzvahs and do the right thing in a world that at times feels like hell.

This is a tremendous look at what motivates a Western Jew to give up a comfortable safe lifestyle to voluntarily enter a place where violence is as common as falafel and potential forced relocation hangs over the yarmulkes. The insightful ensemble story line focuses on one year in the lives of several people as they try to behave like a "proper" Jew in a cantankerous spot in which the psychological land mines seem overwhelming. Though vividly descriptive and well written, the plot lacks the other argument that these Jewish West Bank communities enrage Arab neighbors who see them as reminders of an occupation force.

Harriet Klausner

I could not put the book down-- and I'm anxiously waiting for the
sequel.

This writer enables you to experience all five senses while merely reading-- a novel with a theater-type 'surround sound' effect.