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Heaven
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Plot Summary of Heaven
"Heaven grows up in the hills of West Virginia. She is a member of the Casteels, the poorest family around. As she grows up, she learns who her mother really was, not a scumbag hillbilly, but a rich and beautiful girl, who is now dead. She also deals with poverty and the opinions of the townspeople, all who think they're better than the no good Casteels.

Heaven manages to keep her pride throughout all of this, until one day, her father sells his children one by one. Now Heaven is forced to live with a new set of parents. She must deal with her evil stepmother, Kitty, who holds a grudge against her mother and takes her anger out on Heaven, and her stepfather, Cal, who is close to her age and in love with her. She also attempts to bring her brothers and sisters back together."

Katie Becker, Resident Scholar

"Heaven finds out that the woman who she belived is her mother really isn't and that her dead mother came from a rich family. Abandoned by her stepmother and father, she is forced to take care of her brothers, sisters and grandfather until one day her father came back and sold each child away one by one. She is forced to live with another family. Her new mother treats her as a slave and her new father is secretly in love with her (but not secret for long). So she sets out to find her true identity and to belong. "
Liz, Resident Scholar

""Heaven" tells the story of Heaven Leigh Casteel, a young girl raised in the foothills of the West Virginia mountain range, an area called "the willies". It tells the story of her childhood, the humiliations she suffered because of her poverty and her struggle to rise above it.
She is snatched from the siblings she grew up with after her stepmother dies and is sold to a couple unable to have children of their own. She is abused by her new stepmother and taken advantage of by her stepfather. As she struggles to find her way back to the family she lost, she is inevitably drawn closer and closer to her true heritage, the heritage her real mother died trying to escape.    "

Grace30923, Resident Scholar

Review Analysis of Heaven
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Tone of book? - thoughtful
Time/era of story - 1960's-1970's
Kids growing up/acting up? Yes
Kids: - struggling to earn a living to survive
Poverty, surviving Yes
Family, struggle with Yes
Struggle with: - Father (or standin)
Is this an adult or child's book? - Adult or Young Adult Book
Age group of kid(s) in story: - high school
Something wrong upstairs/downstairs? - searching for identity/meaning
Parents/lack of parents problem? - molestation - unpleasant gift from daddy
Wild kid(s)? - acting savage/like animals

Main Character
Gender - Female
Age: - a teen
Ethnicity/Nationality - White (American)
How sensitive is this character? - sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor - Strong but gentle sense of humor
Intelligence - Very much smarter than other characters
Physique - average physique

Main Adversary
Identity: - Male
Age: - 20's-30's
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in: - an average amount
How sensitive is this character? - mean, arrogant
Intelligence - Dumb
Physique - physically sick

Setting
How much descriptions of surroundings? - 6 (an above average amount)
United States Yes
Forest? Yes
Small town? Yes
Small town people: - dumb Rednecks, like Gomer Pyle - hostile, like Gomer Pyle on steroids

Style
Person - mostly 1st
Accounts of torture and death? - generic/vague references to death/punishment
Sex in book? Yes
What kind of sex: - vague references - descript of kissing - touching of anatomy
Most similar books to Heaven
The Wasp Eater by William Lychack
My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Glory Be To the Father, the Son... by Richard Stickann
Let's Go Play at the Adams' by Mendal W. Johnson


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