Sleep Toward Heaven [Paperback]

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.

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
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"Sleep Toward Heaven is a merciful gaze on the lives of three women inextricably linked by murder and ultimate grace. Brutal, beautiful, wise--Ward has written a storm of a novel. It will rattle the cage of your heart."

Sleep Toward Heaven is a luminous story of murder and desire, solitude and grace, set in Manhattan and small-town Texas. In Gatestown, twenty-nine-year old Karen awaits her execution on Death Row. In New York, Franny, a doctor the same age, plans her wedding and tries to resist her urge to run. In Austin, Celia, a brassy young librarian, mourns her lost husband. Over the course of one summer, the three women's disparate lives intertwine. Karen, Franny, and Celia all struggle to find their place in a world where nothing is sure, as they move toward one night that will change them all forever. With razor-sharp prose and humor that ignites the page, Amanda Eyre Ward's debut novel will keep you reading all night and give you something to talk about in the morning. Sleep Toward Heaven is a novel to celebrate and to savor. Maybe, for a writer, one life isn't enough. Each story I write is a shadow life, running like a river beside my own. In my fiction, I commit murder, live in a strange house filled with items that don't belong to me, board the midnight bus to New Orleans. Sometimes it is my waking life that seems like a dream. I had just moved to Austin, Texas, when I went for a drink at the Carousel Lounge. The woman behind the bar looked about seventy years old, and she was wearing a leotard and ballet shoes. I asked for a martini, and she poured gin in a water glass, speared an olive with a plastic sword, dropped it in the glass, and said, "Four dollars." Later, I heard her speaking loudly to a regular about a local scandal, the yogurt shop murders. "I hope they find those men and fry them, " said the woman in the leotard. "Then we'll have some peace around here." It seemed to me that thenews in Texas revolved around murders and executions. When the Austin Chronicle asked me to interview the women on Death Row, I drove to Gatesville, a small town in central Texas. Although Darlie Routier, now on Death Row for the murder of her twin sons, decided not to meet with me at the last minute, I couldn't drive by the prison without thinking about the women inside. What had snapped inside their minds? What darkness filled them? And, late at night: is that darkness inside me? There are parts of me in Franny, Karen, and Celia. Franny has my neuroses and my weakness for cheap white wine. Karen has a way of seeing the world from outside that I aspire to. And Celia...well, Celia says the things I'd like to say. She also gets to have the affair with that boy I saw in the post office. I read constantly, and two types of books are my favorites: literary novels about love and forgiveness, and heart-stopping page-turners about dark and creepy people. Rarely have I found a book that is both: a literary page-turner. Ann Patchett writes, "Sometimes if there's a book you really want to read, you have to write it yourself." So I wrote Sleep Toward Heaven. I hope you enjoy it. You will hardly believe how seamlessly, beautifully, masterfully Amanda Eyre Ward has woven together the stories of three very different women in this utterly spellbinding novel. I can't imagine a better guide into the dark corners of the justice system and the mysteries of the human heart.--A.S.

Amanda Eyre Ward was born in New York City and graduated from Williams College and the University of Montana. Her short stories have been published in Story Quarterly, Mississippi Review, New Delta Review, Salon.com, and Austin Chronicle. Ward is a regular contributor to the Austin Chronicle. This is her first novel.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.