CHRISTMAS IN HEAVEN

This is not a story about a jolly, red-suited, fat man and his exploits in the hereafter. Instead, it’s a readable, sometimes humorous, and generally implausible novel about the unusual friendships forged by two pairs of unlike young people in the town of Heaven, Florida (pop. 6). Williams (My Angelica, 1999, etc.) tells of 12-year-old Honey DeLoach, who lives with her parents and obnoxious 14-year-old brother, Willie-Bill, in a place that doesn’t even exist on a map. Into this close-knit and religious family sweeps famous movie star Miriam Season and her two daughters, 12-year-old Christmas and 17-year-old Easter. Readers will wonder why a renowned personality would choose to live in a remote backwater (the later explanation doesn’t really ring true); how she would even know about the town in the first place (not explained); and how Miriam, prior to her move, would know how many boys were in the town (also unexplained). Willie-Bill is smitten with delinquent, bizarre Easter immediately; Honey and Christmas quickly become inseparable friends. Both Season daughters have been ignored by their shallow, self-absorbed mother all their lives and have reacted to her neglect in very different ways. Christmas is desperately sad and lonely; Easter is reprobate and an alcoholic. Under the steadying influence of the DeLoach family and through, literally, the saving grace of Honey’s grandfather, a famous evangelist preacher, Christmas discovers a new meaning to life, and both she and Honey grow in friendship and devotion. Willie-Bill and Easter don’t fare so well. Apparently unsalvageable, Easter exerts her unsavory influence upon the boy, whose judgment has been thoroughly clouded, and tragedy ultimately ensues. Kids may not buy all of this, but there’s appeal in Honey and Christmas’s likable and sympathetic characters. (Fiction. 10-14)