Edge of Heaven

from the back cover:
When Lucy's father gives her to Holman in exchange for a mysterious favor, her life is changed forever. Still mourning the death of her own mother, she suddenly finds herself wife to a virtual stranger and mother to his thirteen children. Her initial challenge is to adjust to her new family. The there are the neighbors to consider: cheerful Bessie and her family, gruff-talking Herby with his menacing friends, and the charming peddler Jake, who offers a chance for escape. Though she gradually learns to accept Holman's people, she never forgets the her Cherokee mother left her a precious legacy, engraved on a gold locket. When will that legacy be realized? Where might she reach the edge of heaven?

"During the nineteen years the author lived with her grandmother Lucy, she listened well to the story of that woman's remarkable life. She realistically dramatizes the challenges and conflicts of this situation in the mountains of Western North Carolina in the 1890s. Daily hardship is lightened by flashes of humor; human pettiness is balanced against nature's bounty. Lucy would appreciate her granddaughter's weaving of fact and imagination into a story reaching toward the edge of heaven." —Wilma Dykeman

softcover, 249 pages
no illustrations, ©1997