Heaven (Casteel Series)
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Heaven is a 1985 novel by V. C. Andrews. It is the first of the five books in her Casteel series.
[edit] Plot summary
It is about a fourteen year old girl named Heaven Leigh Casteel who lives in poverty with her rather large and discontented family in a shack up in the hills nicknamed "The Willies". Her family includes her stepmother Sara, her father Luke, and her half siblings, Tom, Fanny, Keith, and Our Jane.
Her father, Luke, is still haunted by the memory of his young dead wife who died giving birth to Heaven. Luke is rarely home for his new wife and five children and struggles to take care of them. He is a constant enemy of Heaven's, since he does not show her any of the love he shows his other children, thought by Heaven to be caused by her birth killing his first wife. His unhappy marriage and life leads Luke to go to a local brothel where he eventually catches a STD. Due to this, when his second wife, Sara, becomes pregnant, she delivers a stillborn. The trauma of this causes a snowball effect. The horrible event is the last straw for Heaven's grandmother who passes away a short time after the birth of the stillborn baby. The family (all but the absent Luke) bury the baby and grandmother at the same time. This causes Sara, long since unhappy with her life, to run off. Now the children must fiend for themselves and steal food.
While this is all happening, Heaven is developing a relationship with a boy from school, Logan. His father owns the local store and he attempts to help her and her siblings, but Heaven, filled with pride, rejects it as they fall in love. Heaven's little sister, Fanny, is also pursuing Logan and makes amorous advances.
Whenever things look bleak, Luke shows up with food to save the day, never staying long due to his "sickness". Eventually, he comes up with a plan to sell his kids for $500 a piece. This breaks the family apart and Heaven must find a way to get her siblings back together.
Meanwhile, Heaven lives with Kitty and Cal Dennison (who bought her for $500). Kitty grew up in the same town as Heaven, and seems to hate Heaven for it. Kitty has an unnatural obsession with cleanliness and being in control. Heaven is forced to act like a maid and slave to satisfy Kitty's need for everything to be clean, and her husband Cal suffers her need for control by constantly being sexually teased and tormented by his wife. When things don't go Kitty's way she becomes violent and beats Heaven. Her cruelty towards Heaven is later revealed to be caused by the fact that Kitty fell in love with Luke and almost had his child. She attempted to give herself an abortion, and caused herself to never have the ability to have children. Because of this, Kitty sees Heaven as a release for her anger towards Luke, and sees her as the daughter she was never able to have, causing Kitty to have almost split personalities.
Having only each other to find comfort in, Cal and Heaven developed a tight bond, which ultimately leads to Cal's pursuit of sex with Heaven. Eventually giving in, Heaven is overcome by guilt, but unable to stop.
Kitty becomes sick (later revealed to be breast cancer) and the three go back to Kitty and Heaven's hometown to seek aid from Kitty's family. There Heaven is reunited with Tom, Fanny, and her childhood sweetheart, Logan. Things turn for the worst when Heaven, overcome by guilt, tells Logan about her affair with Cal and he runs from her, unwilling to hear her story. Shortly after this Luke visits Kitty looking for Heaven and presents Heaven with two options; live with him and his new wife, or seek out her mother's family. Seeing that their father is a changed man, Tom goes to live his father (and escape his own troubling life with his foster parent), but Heaven, unable to forgive her father, seeks out her mother's family. After Cal drops her off at the airport, Heaven learns of Kitty's death and realizes that Cal abandoned her and she is truly on her own. All she can do now is hope she finds peace and love with her mother's family.
