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As Bright As Heaven by Susan Meissner

Historical fiction

As Bright As Heaven

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This is an early release that's only available to our members—the rest of the world has to wait to read it.

by Susan Meissner

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Quick take

This story of love in the time of the Spanish Flu pandemic is equal parts heartache and romance.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Romance

    Romance

  • Illustrated icon, Heavy_Read

    Heavy read

  • Illustrated icon, 400

    400+ pages

  • Illustrated icon, Multiple_Viewpoints

    Multiple viewpoints

Synopsis

From the acclaimed author of Secrets of a Charmed Life and A Bridge Across the Ocean comes a new novel set in Philadelphia during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, which tells the story of a family reborn through loss and love.

In 1918, Philadelphia was a city teeming with promise. Even as its young men went off to fight in the Great War, there were opportunities for a fresh start on its cobblestone streets. Into this bustling town, came Pauline Bright and her husband, filled with hope that they could now give their three daughters—Evelyn, Maggie, and Willa—a chance at a better life.

But just months after they arrive, the Spanish Flu reaches the shores of America. As the pandemic claims more than twelve thousand victims in their adopted city, they find their lives left with a world that looks nothing like the one they knew. But even as they lose loved ones, they take in a baby orphaned by the disease who becomes their single source of hope. Amidst the tragedy and challenges, they learn what they cannot live without—and what they are willing to do about it.

As Bright as Heaven is the compelling story of a mother and her daughters who find themselves in a harsh world not of their making, which will either crush their resolve to survive or purify it.

Free sample

As Bright As Heaven

Pauline

Morning light shimmers on the apricot horizon as I stand at the place where my baby boy rests. Stouthearted chickadees are singing in the day, just like they have done every other winter's dawn, but when this same sun sets tonight, I will be miles away from them, and inside an unfamiliar house. There will be no reminders anywhere that Henry was ever mine. Not visible ones, anyway.

I kneel on the dead grass, brittle with icy moisture. The fabric of my skirt draws in the chilled damp, as if it is parched with thirst. The growing wetness at my knees is unhurried and easy, like a clean, slow blade. I look at the little marble slab that bears Henry's name and the carving of a sweet lamb curled up among lilies, and I'm reminded again that he was my angel child, even before he flew away to heaven.

From the moment I held my boy, glistening and new, I knew that he wasn't like the other babies I'd given birth to. He wasn't like my girls. They'd slipped out annoyed by the noise and chill and sharp edges of this world. Not Henry. He didn't cry. He didn't curl his tiny hands into fists. He didn't shout his displeasure at being pulled out of the only safe place he knew.

When the doctor placed him in my arms, Henry merely looked at me with eyes so blue they could've been sapphires. He held my gaze like he knew who I was. Knew everything about me. Like he still had the breath of eternity in his lungs.

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Why I love it

I love when a book makes me experience such powerful and raw emotions that, days after turning the last page, I find myself still completely immersed in that world. Such is the case with As Bright as Heaven, a stunning and intimate family saga that follows the lives of the Bright family women against the backdrop of World War I-era Philadelphia during the little-known Spanish flu pandemic that took thousands of American lives.

The novel opens with heartbreak: A mother, Pauline, is reeling from the sudden death of her infant son. So when her husband is offered the opportunity to help his brother run the family funeral home in the big city of Philadelphia, they jump at the chance to leave their sleepy farm town and create a new beginning.

Though their three daughters don't understand why they have to leave all they have ever known behind, they are soon absorbed with their new life at the mortuary. The eldest daughter, Evelyn is fascinated by books, science, and anatomy and her new environment (though morbid), feeds her passion for knowledge of these things. Maggie helps Pauline style the hair and the make-up of the deceased and Willa is a precocious teenager blessed with the gift of song. Even though they are surrounded by death, Pauline and her daughters grow, laugh, love and slowly begin to heal. Just when all is well again, the Spanish Flu hits, to terrible effect for both the family and the community.

Meissner has penned a beautifully-constructed world dominated by female protagonists that, time and again, find themselves completely devastated yet somehow rise up, infused with hope and determination to survive. This is a story about family and the resiliency of the female spirit, about grace in the face of adversity and all the little moments that bring joy. A book filled with beauty, As Bright as Heaven is masterfully done.

Member ratings (4,907)

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Historical fiction
View all
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
The Women
Husbands & Lovers
Shelterwood
A Thousand Times Before
All We Were Promised
Spitting Gold
The Seventh Veil of Salome
The Mayor of Maxwell Street
The Great Divide
The Storm We Made
The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard
Lessons in Chemistry
The Frozen River
What We Kept to Ourselves
Take My Hand
The Last Russian Doll
The First Ladies
The House Is On Fire
River Sing Me Home
The Attic Child
Malibu Rising
The Book of Longings
Hester
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
The Nightingale
Daisy Jones & The Six
The Lincoln Highway
The Secret Book of Flora Lea
Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?
The Circus Train
Peach Blossom Spring
Hang the Moon
Booth
The Good Left Undone
The Perishing
The Family
Things We Lost to the Water
The Spectacular
Still Life
Send for Me
The Magnolia Palace
The Bookbinder
China Room
This Tender Land
Atomic Love
All the Light We Cannot See
The Vanishing Half
Outlawed
The Four Winds
Independence
The Fountains of Silence
Libertie
Queen of Thieves
The Great Believers
The Clockmaker's Daughter
A Gentleman in Moscow
The Great Alone
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
The Heart’s Invisible Furies
Rules of Civility
Circling the Sun
The Moor's Account
Jacqueline in Paris
Don't Cry for Me
The Christie Affair
Bloomsbury Girls
The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle
Bronze Drum