Heaven Eyes
David Almond
Delacorte Press April 2001 0-385-32770-6 $15.95
233 pages 8-1/4 x 5-3/4 Ages 10 and up

Erin Law and January Carr run for freedom. Tired of White Gates, a home for abandoned children, tired of being the world’s least favorite children, tired of the everyday reminders of their parentless state, they seek adventure on their jaunts, only to return after a few days. But when Erin, January, and Mouse, a small boy in need of their strength, leave on a river raft one afternoon, it is to a destination that will forever alter them. Washed onto the Black Middens, a stinking, sticky mud area off the river, the three children crawl into another reality consisting of deserted buildings, boxes of canned food, and two solitary, otherworldly people: Heaven Eyes and Grampa.
          Heaven Eyes is like no other being the children have encountered. Besides her moon- ale coloring and webbed fingers, she seems to speak in riddles, and the children struggle to unravel her past. Grampa, fully living in his past as the building’s caretaker, loves Heaven Eyes fiercely and threatens “fettling” if she is harmed. For she is the one who can “see through all the grief and trouble in the world to the heaven that does lie beneath.”
          Erin is the story’s narrator, and she tells of how the three of them adjust in this strange place: she and Heaven Eyes become close immediately in a sister-like bond, while January remains suspicious of Heaven Eyes and her capacity to love them all unconditionally. Mouse begins to accompany Grampa on his nightly diggings in the Middens and earns the title of Little Helper. Everyone but January seems content.
          But in the deep silence of the building and its surrounding Middens, the children begin to wrestle with their memories, mysteries, and dreams. Heaven Eyes and Grampa’s world is a waiting place, a finding place, but also a hellish place, eager to suck them in if they lose themselves.
          While Erin goes to the depths of herself and survives with Heaven Eyes’ help, January discovers pieces of Heaven’s story and risks Grampa’s wrath. The confrontation that ensues allows Grampa to finally give Heaven Eyes her treasures, the pieces of her past, and let her go.
          David Almond’s third novel is utterly captivating. Each passage takes the reader deeper and deeper into the lives of the characters, and eventually the reader is pushed outside, blinking. What was real? What really happened in the Middens? Is Heaven Eyes a living angel? Layer upon layer, Almond tells a story about loss, friendship, family, and the endurance of love. It is also a story of faith, as Erin prays to her dead mother in times of need and comfort, as Heaven Eyes relies on her newfound family to lead her away from the Middens and back to White Gates. A familiarity with Christianity will help tie together this already tightly woven story. Life happens, death happens, clay figures walk, saints emerge, and hell descends and recedes.
          The language is startling—Heaven Eyes’ sentences often lack verbs, or they’re in another tense. As one adjusts to her manner of speaking, one realizes she speaks in heart talk. Nothing is hidden. As the narrator, Erin describes each scene through sharp eyes and an unusually wise perspective. Heaven Eyes is deeply touching. The most impressive part of this novel is the trust Almond’s children have in their memories and mysteries. Many times, adult caretakers do not validate these memories and put forth what they consider the “real” story.
           In Heaven Eyes, Almond’s children are the soothsayers. But he does not let them get hung up in the past. Almond propels the children forward to form new families and tell each other the stories that count the most—their own.

—Holly H. Coughlin