"There is something catty about the women. I don't know. With the men it's very straightforward, but with the women there`s the............you might say the cunning."
The title of the book alone was what drew me to it "Sleep Towards Heaven".
It is a work well done for this first novelist Amanda Eyre Ward. Set in Gatestown, Texas, we are invited into the lives of four women on Death Row.
The story centres too around two totally different individuals whose lives will be affected by one of these women sentenced to death by lethal injection. We meet Celia a widow who has lost her husband to murder, and Franny a doctor and caregiver, who spends her time with the incarcerated, and of course Karen, who is at the core of the tale.
As these lives intertwine, we see harshness without forgiveness, severe love, stubbornness and also grace and love. It shows us what people would do for the sake of love; how far one would go to have one's love returned, or just to satisfy the one loved.
These women live their last days out watching TV, doing handicraft, praying and deciding what their last meals will be before their deaths, when they will be sentenced, and some of them become changed in spiritual ways, relying on God's forgiveness and going to a better place after death.
It is sad but it is well told and it is a good first effort.
Reviewed by Heather Marshall Negahdar (SUGAR-CANE 09/08/07
