All we know of heaven : a novel

cover image

Where to find it

Information & Library Science Library — Juvenile

Call Number
J Mitchard
Status
Available

Authors, etc.

Names:

Summary

Bridget Flannery and Maureen O'Malley have been BFFs since forever. Then a brief moment of inattention on an icy road leaves one girl dead and the other in a coma, battered beyond recognition. Family and friends mourn one friend's loss and pray for the other's recovery. Then the doctors discover they have made a terrible mistake. The girl who lived is the one who everyone thought had died.

Based on a true case of mistaken identity, All We Know of Heaven is a universal story that no one can read unmoved: a drama of ordinary people caught up in an unimaginable tragedy and of the healing power of hope and love.

Sample chapter

All We Know of Heaven A Novel Chapter One the first valentine's day Once she understood that she was dead, her first thought was that heaven was overrated. Perhaps she wasn't in heaven but in purgatory, sort of heaven's mudroom. Either way, everything her grandmother and Father Genovese had taught her was a lie. There were no streets of gold or a cappella singing, no elderly ancestors like little apple dolls gathered to welcome her, no mountain sunsetsâ€"not even Disney World without lines. But it took such a long time to think of this that it made her wonder if she was aliveâ€"or if maybe being dead took getting used to, like cold water or the dentist. At first she could only think of the place where she was as PUH. And even for that she had to sort of scale her way up her thoughts, as if thinking was a climbing rope in the gym. Pee. Pie. Please. Tree. See. Seats. Store. No! Nononono. No. Start over. Story. Pie story. Pug hug. Piggy hug. Pug. It took her many times, as long as a carpet unrolling forever, to think of the word for . . . purgatory. Trying to wiggle into her own mind wore her out. She couldn't even find the door. And being an angel was supposed to be easy compared with life. But did angels think? Maybe she wasn't an angel. Maybe what she'd done with Danny had disqualified her. Maybe only ghosts had these kinds of issues. How was it possible that she could think of words such as "disqualified" and "issues" but not ordinary wordsâ€"and she knew that there were wordsâ€"for the "lights" and "darks"? How could she remember Danny but not, half the time, her own name? Her mind was like her grandmother's refrigerator: a jumble of little things, some moldy beyond recognition but still frugally savedâ€"two brown coins of banana, a few spoonfuls of riceâ€"all in little plastic-wrapped squares. And she couldn't open the stuck-together little squares. She couldn't get them unstuck any more than she could open her eyes. She couldn't get her eyes to open, not even for a second. She wasn't sad. You weren't supposed to be sad at your death. But she wasn't joyous either. Where was the bliss? When they were tiny, adults called them the Pigtail Pals, as if they were a brand of doll. When they were bigger, they called them the Dyno Mites, as if they were a stomp team. Always togetherâ€"two elfin blond things, tiny but shockingly strong (Bridget could walk up thirteen stairs on her hands by the time she was eight). They took Tumbleweeds together at the Y and after that headed off to cheerleading classes and camp, even though at their school it was the pom girls who had been revered as sex goddesses and the cheerleaders treated basically like scum. But now that they were sophomores there were cheerleading movies (and no pom-pom movies!); plus, the cheerleaders had the best bodies of anyone, thighs with strips of long, lean muscle that amazed even the girls themselves when they stood in front of a mirror in underpants. Sometimes it seemed worth it. As they had grown olderâ€"at least according to Maureen's older brother Jackâ€"they resembled each other even more. Sometimes they bought the same clothes in different colors, if Maureen could afford them. If Maureen couldn't, sometimes Bridget bought the clothes for both of them. On sale, but still. They loved being seen as a pair. Bridget and Maureen took pride in the marks on the Flannery garage door that showed, year after year, that they were exactly the same heightâ€"not one half inch taller or shorter. They had the same huge, almond-slanted gold-flecked green eyes; and they could charm anyoneâ€"usually out of anything. Well, Bridget was the one who did the charming, which was what Maureen both loved and feared about her. "My older sister was a Girl Scout," Bridget once told the lady who sold Girl Scout cookies outside the Shop-and-Save. "She's in the . . . in an insane hospital now, and she can't be a Girl Scout anymore. She still wears her outfit and her badges and pretends she is. She used to sell cookies." Bridget didn't even have an older sister. But her earnest sweetness as she lied was always good for a free box of Thin Mints. Somehow the lady at the Shop-and-Save never compared notes with the ladies at the Bigelow Bank or the Coffee Clutch. "Where did you get all those cookies?" Maureen's mother had asked, when Maureen came home with a box stuffed nonchalantly inside her hoodie. "Ladies gave us boxes of them," Maury had told her honestly. "You're not supposed to take things from strangers!" her mother snapped, examining the boxes as if they might contain razor blades or arsenic. "They weren't strangers," Maury said. "It was Mrs. Hotchkiss and the lunch lady at Henry's school, Miss Bliss. They were sitting inside the bank." "Why'd they give them to you for free?" "They like us," Maury said. That was a fact. It was only one of the privileges of being Bridget's friend, as Bridget explained solemnly. By the time she was six she had understood the meaning of "privilege." She knew it was good to be her. She understood her own charisma. You didn't dare to say no to Bridgetâ€"not if you wanted to stay friends with her. And you did want to stay her friend. Everyone did. She picked up friendships the way tape picked up lint from a sweaterâ€"effortlessly, easily, and with about as much passion. Friends were a delight to Bridget butâ€"with the exception of Mauryâ€"readily interchangeable. Maureen was proud to be the first friend Bridget collected when she came to Bigelow and the one she had kept. Aside from Maury, Bridget took you as a BFF for two weeks, gave you the whole Bridget treatmentâ€"the pool, gymnastics on the huge tramp, b-ball and tennis on the sport courtsâ€"but most of her best friends didn't last a semester, let alone forever. All We Know of Heaven A Novel . Copyright © by Jacquelyn Mitchard . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from All We Know of Heaven by Jacquelyn Mitchard All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Other details