Edge of Heaven

I came across this author and book quite by accident while searching genealogy queries for Macon County, NC. Once I received the book and began reading, I could hardly wait to get back to it each time I had to put it down. Having grown up in the actual county where Lucy Davenport lived with Holman Carpenter and in much the same circumstances of her environment, I can truly relate to her experiences and struggles. I, too, was separated from my parents and siblings at age 9, next to the youngest of 12 children who were all born at home by midwife; struggling each day just to survive. Edge of Heaven through Lucy Davenport and Eva brought me back to a place where character and strength are built through hard times endured. I was so glad to learn that Holman was indeed an honorable man and felt throughout the entire book that he was; recognizing the patterns of his disappearances. It is often through the experience of harsh realities that we discover our true strength and Eva, in her telling of this story, helped to bring back wonderful memories of the laughter we built into the walls of our homes and hearts. I remember simple childhood pleasures such as lightening bugs, making wishes by blowing dandelions into the wind, haint stories, weird noises in the woods, making mud pies and the same experiences of Lucy Davenport. She may have lived in the 1890's, but for all intent and purposes, I lived along side her. Edge of Heaven reaffirmed to me that a person can overcome poverty, illness, heartbreak or any other trial they might encounter and climb up out of the valleys to the mountaintops and be stronger in the climbing. I thank God for those experiences and I know that I am stronger for having lived through those times. I also thank God that I came across Eva and Edge of Heaven and through the renewal I received as a result of having read it, I traveled back to my childhood in North Carolina and relived those times. Today, I ordered Children of the Mountains and can hardly wait until it arrives. Thank you for this book and for the memories - this is a must-read! Thank you and GOD Bless you - please write many more!

In Edge of Heaven, Eva McCall recounts the story of her grandmother's marriage to a man with 13 children per a deal with her father. The story is fascinating. The characters are profound and vibrant. Lucy, the main character, finds herself in a new, inhospitable world with a husband she finds frightening and who is seldom home, the eldest daughter who despises her because she feels she is taking her mother's place, a peddler called Jake who has the power to quell Lucy's loneliness but is also hiding a secret, and gruff Herby Ledford who gives her a hard time. There are many interesting tales hiding in this book's pages that can keep you reading and reading tirelessly. And by the time you finish the book a sweet feeling of nostalgia creeps over as if you had lived the entire story yourself. It is this power of making stories written on a page live in one's memory as if they were real that truly distinghuishes Eva McCall's writing style. Edge of Heaven is an excitingly delightful book and with its vivid protrayals and descriptions, it would make a great movie.

At seventeen, Lucy Davenport has never ventured off the Georgia mountain where she lived with her full-blooded Cherokee mother and her white father, Edmund. But it's 1895 and times are changing rapidly for the half-girl, half woman. Her two sisters have married and moved away, mother has recently died and Lucy and her father are left alone to cope. It's a hard scrabble life there on the mountain with only her dead mother's spirit and Jasper the dog to help her.Holman Carpenter's wife had died six months earlier, and he needs a wife to take of his thirteen children (ages thirteen to six months). Edmund and Holman make a deal in which Holman takes Lucy as his wife, but it isn't until three-fourths through the book that readers learn why Edmund consented to the deal. When they reach his farm in North Carolina, Lucy meets the children. Some like her, some resent her, some don't even understand why she's there. Lucy spends the next two years plotting to run away. Her Cherokee relatives are not too far away, and she is sure that they'll take her in. But the children, who so desperately need someone to care for them, tug at her heartstrings. Along the way, readers meet Jake the peddler who captures her heart and offers her only real chance for escape; Bessie, the large, homely woman who befriends the only girl-woman and teaches her to read; and the children---Annie May and Dovey---who stand out as an ally and an enemy. The scenes with Annie May and Dovey will both break your heart and make you so mad that you want to slap some sense into the insolent girl.As time goes by, Lucy finds it harder and harder to leave her new home. Although sickness and death hover around her, it is love that finally surrounds her.EDGE OF HEAVEN takes readers back to what life must have really been like in the late 1890s. Thankfully Ms. McCall rarely brings up the issue of Lucy's parentage (half white/half Cherokee). Its delineation is done very subtly, mainly through the use of teas and herbs that she learned from her mother. Many readers judge a book by its first page and while this book does a few flaws on page one, McCall corrects them beginning on page two, and has developed a marvelous, fast-paced, taut, novel/biography. EDGE OF HEAVEN is McCall's first novel, and her talent for creating memorable characters is remarkable. I was upset when I reached the final page of EDGE OF HEAVEN because I didn't want Lucy's story to end. I wanted to know how her life turns out there on the mountain. However, as luck would have it, I understand that Bright Mountain Books is nearing publication of a sequel of this amazing novel titled "Children of the Mountain." I can't wait to get my hands on it!

I had a couple of conversations by email with Eva McCall before I read this book. Previously I said that my daughter and I share a love of literature and trade books we like and discuss them. Ms. McCall suggested her book, not for me, but for my daughter.I don't know why people think a man can't love a book that is filled with life's experiences, that is sensitive and moving. At the same time this book is crisply written. It's very easy to find yourself lost in the lives of the characters. I think it's okay for a man, even in this politically correct society, to identify with a young woman's hopes and needs. Perhaps a little more of that wouldn't hurt anybody.Any parent who has stood up around-the-clock with a sick child can't help but pray along with Lucy, the main character, for her young charge's recovery. Many of the scenes in the book reminded me of various people in my own family: the wisdom and kindness that can be shown by an eleven-year-old girl; the awesome courage of a very sick little boy; the laying-aside of the aspirations of a late-teenage girl when responsibility beckons...aspirations that are rekindled again and again until they are finally realized; and love that transcends death.I hesitate to even whisper the name William Faulkner (shhhh), but, darn it, her characters are evocative of those found in Faulkner's works. He didn't mine all the gold in those shafts.I highly recommend this book. Ms. McCall is an author who will find her name mentioned among this country's greatest. College professors will require that their students read her books. I can't wait for her next effort.

Edge of Heaven by Eva McCallEdge of Heaven shouted "Read Me" from the minute I saw the cover. It's truly the most inviting cover picture I've ever seen (I work in a bookstore). It's an larger sized paperback, with a pretty side binding that makes it a nice addition to any bookshelf when it's not on the coffee table. The story is based on the biographical story of the author's grandmother in the 1890's in the mountains of North Carolina. Lucy, 18, is the last unmarried daughter of Edmund Davenport. He trades her to a widower in need of a mother for his 13 children in return for an unknown reason. Lucy goes along with her father's wishes with a heavy heart, packs her few belongings, and moves from Georgia to Mr. Carpenter's home in the Smokies of western North Carolina.Some of the children, ages 6 months to 15, adjust to her presence fairly well, but others treat her as an intruder, an unwelcome substitute for their real mother. The eldest, Dovey,is especially difficult and unaccepting since she's been "mother" to the younger ones and doesn't easily surrender her role to Lucy. Lucy plans to leave and try to find out more about her Cherokee mother and the legacy behind a gold locket, the only material reminder of her mother. As she awaits the peddler's return and possible escape with his help she learns the ways of the rural life in the Smokies. She meets the neighbors, learns some secrets she must keep, and endears herself to the children. Eventually, she realizes she not only loves all the children, but their father also. In the meantime, all must heal and bond after a family tragedy.You won't find dirty words or blood and gore detail or hot sexual content - just a good, fast reading, inspirational story of southern rural life, with its illness, poverty, violence, sense of family, loss, and love. Lucy returns to the mountain top (the cover scene) and sees the "edge of Heaven" in the view of clouds over the mountains with the sun streaming through them. "Could her ma's spirit be part of this magnificent light?" Surely, it is, for now Lucy learns why her father traded her, but also, the legacy of the locket. As a middle-aged mother and a native North Carolinian myself, I'd thought this book very appealing for women, especially from the South. However, when sub-teaching in a Michigan junior high class and seeing a 8th grade girl reading Edge of Heaven when her work was done, I realized this book can speak to any female from age 12 to 102, wherever she's from.