SLEEP TOWARD HEAVEN
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.
“When I created my fictional death row, I drew sketches of each of the women in their cells, thought about what they owned and what they loved. I hung the sketches in front of my computer as I wrote. Then I headed to Gatesville, Texas, to interview Darlie Rouitier, who sits on death row for killing her two sons...”
— Amanda on Sleep Toward Heaven
REVIEWS
“Intimate. Unflinching...very tough to put down. Ward's triumph is to humanize all of these characters...we cannot help but see ourselves.”
— Pam Houston, O, Oprah Magazine
“Women's death row as you have never seen it; hauntingly rich, wise and sharply etched. In prison parlace: a bonaroo first novel!”
— James Ellroy, author of L.A. Confidential
“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.”