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Summary
Summary
Hailed as "America's most popular suspense novelist" (Rolling Stone) Dean Koontz has entered a rich new phase of his writing career that is yielding his most imaginative, meaningful, and popular work yet. At the height of his powers as a literary craftsman, he has won the acclaim of critics as well as the allegiance of millions of fans the world over, transforming the greatest fears and hopes of our time into masterworks of dazzling originality and emotional resonance. Now, with the stunning depth and virtuosity of his storytelling, he brings to readers one of his most gripping and richly imagined novels to date -- an intoxicating story of adventure and suspense, mystery and revelation, told with humor, heart, and high art. One Door Away From Heaven In a dusty trailer park on the far edge of the California dream, Michelina Bellsong contemplates the choices she has made. At twenty-eight, she wants to change the direction of her troubled life but can't find her way -- until a new family settles into the rental trailer next door and she meets the young girl who will lead her on a remarkable quest that will change Micky herself and everything she knows -- or thinks she knows -- forever. Despite the brace she must wear on her deformed left leg, and her withered left hand, nine-year-old Leilani Klonk radiates a buoyant and indomitable spirit that inspires Micky. Beneath Leilani's effervescence, however, Micky comes to sense a quiet desperation that the girl dares not express. Leilani's mother is little more than a child herself. And the girl's stepfather, Preston Maddoc, is educated but threatening. He has moved the family from place to place as he fanatically investigates UFO sightings, striving to make contact, claiming to have had a vision that by Leilani's tenth birthday aliens will either heal her or take her away to a better life on their world. Slowly, ever more troubling details emerge in Leilani's conversations with Micky. Most chilling is Micky's discovery that Leilani had an older brother, also disabled, who vanished after Maddoc took him into the woods one night and is now "gone to the stars." Leilani's tenth birthday is approaching. Micky is convinced the girl will be dead by that day. While the child-protection bureaucracy gives Micky the runaround, the Maddoc family slips away into the night. Micky sets out across America to track and find them, alone and afraid but for the first time living for something bigger than herself. She finds herself pitted against an adversary, Preston Maddoc, as fearsome as he is cunning. The passion and disregard for danger with which Micky pursues her quest bring to her side a burned-out detective who joins her on a journey of incredible peril and startling discoveries, a journey through terrible darkness to unexpected light. One Door Away From Heaven is an incandescent mix of suspense and humor, fear and wonder, a story of redemption and timeless wisdom that will have readers cheering. Filled with tragedy and joy, with terror and hope, it solidifies Dean Koontz's reputation as one of the foremost storytellers of our time. This is Dean Koontz at his very best -- and it doesn't get any better than that. From the Hardcover edition.
Author Notes
Dean Koontz was born on July 9, 1945 in Everett, Pennsylvania. He received a degree in education from Shippensburg State College in 1967. A former high school English teacher as well as a teacher-counselor with the Appalachian Poverty Program, he began writing as a child to escape an ugly home life caused by his alcoholic father. A prolific writer at a young age, he had sold a dozen novels by the age of 25. Early in his career, he wrote under numerous pen names including David Axton, Brian Coffey, K. R. Dwyer, Leigh Nichols, Richard Paige, and Owen West. He is best known for the books written under his own name, many of which are bestsellers, including Midnight, Cold Fire, The Bad Place, Hideaway, The Husband, Odd Hours, 77 Shadow Street, Innocence, The City, Saint Odd, and The Silent Corner.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Koontz's latest is powered by an impassioned stand against utilitarian bioethics, and it's chock-a-block with trademark characters vulnerable kids, nurturing parental substitutes, a dog of above-average intelligence and a villain of insuperable nastiness sure to provoke a pleasurable conditioned response from his readers. The discursive story coalesces from two converging subplots steeped in the weirdness of fringe ufology: in one, loser Michelina Bellsong struggles to save crippled nine-year-old Leilani Klonk from an evil stepdad planning to pass off her imminent disposal as a benevolent alien abduction; in the other, a strange boy who goes by the alias Curtis Hammond is the quarry of two cross-country manhunts, one led by the FBI and the other by mass murderers who, like the messianic Curtis, may not be what they seem. En route to a pyrotechnic finale in rural Idaho, Koontz shoots bull's-eyes at target issues that shape his theme, including assisted suicide, substance abuse, the irresponsibility of the counterculture and the goofiness of true-believer ET enthusiasts. Koontz's once form-fitting style has gotten baggy of late, however, and readers may find themselves wishing he had better filtered the flights of fancy his characters sometimes indulge at chapter length. For all that, the novel is surprisingly focused on its inspirational message "we are the instruments of one another's salvation and only by the hope that we give to others do we lift ourselves out of the darkness into light" and conveys it with such conviction that only the most critical will demur. (Dec. 26) Forecast: A terrific cover, depicting two female figures on a country path beneath a star-filled night sky, will alert browsers to the awe and mystery within the novel; Koontz's name and Bantam's promo machine will do the rest. Koontz could hit #1 with this one. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Koontz's latest is a tale of redemption from fallen lives and of faith in the universe-nothing we haven't seen before. Not to say it isn't entertaining. It will enthrall readers. But nothing extraordinary awaits them at the end. The writing is baroque, and there seems to be no reason for much of Koontz's elaborateness. Micky, just emerging from a nasty period in her life, is living with her kooky Aunt Geneva when she meets bright, witty Leilani-Lani for short-who despises the pity people feel for her when they see her mutant hand and braced leg. She would rather they remembered her wit. Micky finds meaning in her own life when she discovers the horrible truth of Lani's, and, finally given something other than anger to focus on, rides to the rescue. Interwoven with this story is that of a boy fleeing the FBI and creatures far, far worse, who killed his mother and will stop at nothing to kill him. The book's revelations, while not exactly predictable, are not earth shattering. Suffice it to say that the tale is told well enough to satisfy, besides Koontz's faithful fandom, the less jaded and more hopeful among us. --Regina Schroeder
Kirkus Review
The Koontz of the darkly concentrated 1996 suspense masterpiece Intensity has clearly walked over a bed of glowing coals, emerged spiritually recharged by the Presence, and now disgorges sweetness and light along with suspense, even more so than in his most recent page-turner, From the Corner of His Eye (2000). Here, Koontz enters the field of bioethics, with medical utilitarianism facing moral values. Of course, with his fearless imagination at work, this is not your typical tract novel. Bilious Micky Bellsong's fractured spirit needs splints until she meets crippled young Leilani Klonk, who lives in the trailer next to Micky's and calls herself a mutant, not a cripple. Leilani's family believes in spiritual DNA infusions from aliens-in fact, they know her brother was abducted by aliens. Koontz tilts against a heartless idealism that sees humanity as just meat and allows euthanasia of infants with health problems, suffering old people, and those much better off with a little help getting dead and leaving life to the bioethicists. Do ETs actually show up? And if so, how truly alien is an alien? We're not telling. Certain to ring the topmost bell on all bestseller lists as Koontz lights up a dark galaxy.
Library Journal Review
Koontz is the master of the supernatural-suspense novel and other cross-genre literary combinations. These two works demonstrate his talent for creating unlikely early situations in multiple and disparate story lines, then pulling them together for convincing and ultimately uplifting denouements. He does this seemingly effortlessly with great writing and excellent characters and dialog. In One Door Away from Heaven, read by Anne Twomey, a fictional condemnation of utilitarian bioethics, the author joins plot elements that include an endangered and precocious child, human-dog bonding, the world of UFO and ET cultism, and an imperiled alien who's been placed on Earth to help save the planet. In The Face, read by Dylan Baker, a sadistic professor of literature plans to kidnap and torture the lonely and marginalized child of the world's most famous movie star, Channing Manheim (a.k.a. "The Face"). Channing's security chief is aided by a guardian angel, among other supernatural entities, in thwarting the attack. In both programs, the readers do a great job of capturing the personalities of Koontz's roster of unique, kooky, evil, cynical, canine, alien, divine, and undead characters. Both programs are highly recommended.-Kristen L. Smith, Loras Coll. Lib., Dubuque, IA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter One THE WORLD IS FULL of broken people. Splints, casts, miracle drugs, and time can't mend fractured hearts, wounded minds, torn spirits. Currently, sunshine was Micky Bellsong's medication of choice, and southern California in late August was an apothecary with a deep supply of this prescription. Tuesday afternoon, wearing a bikini and oiled for broiling, Micky reclined in a lounge chair in her aunt Geneva's backyard. The nylon webbing was a nausea-inducing shade of green, and it sagged, too, and the aluminum joints creaked as though the lawn furniture were far older than Micky, who was only twenty-eight, but who sometimes felt ancient. Her aunt, from whom fate had stolen everything except a reliable sense of humor, referred to the yard as "the garden." That would be the rosebush. The property was wider than it was deep, to allow the full length of the house trailer to face the street. Instead of a lawn with trees, a narrow covered patio shaded the front entrance. Here in back, a strip of grass extended from one side of the lot to the other, but it provided a scant twelve feet of turf between the door and the rear fence. The grass flourished because Geneva watered it regularly with a hose. The rosebush, however, responded perversely to tender care. In spite of ample sunshine, water, and plant food, in spite of the regular aeration of its roots and periodic treatment with measured doses of insecticide, the bush remained as scraggly and as blighted as any specimen watered with venom and fed pure sulfur in the satanic gardens of Hell. Face to the sun, eyes closed, striving to empty her mind of all thought, yet troubled by insistent memories, Micky had been cooking for half an hour when a small sweet voice asked, "Are you suicidal?" She turned her head toward the speaker and saw a girl of nine or ten standing at the low, sagging picket fence that separated this trailer space from the one to the west. Sun glare veiled the kid's features. "Skin cancer kills," the girl explained. "So does vitamin D deficiency." "Not likely." "Your bones get soft." "Rickets. I know. But you can get vitamin D in tuna, eggs, and dairy products. That's better than too much sun." Closing her eyes again, turning her face to the deadly blazing heavens, Micky said, "Well, I don't intend to live forever." "Why not?" "Maybe you haven't noticed, but nobody does." "I probably will," the girl declared. "How's that work?" "A little extraterrestrial DNA." "Yeah, right. You're part alien." "Not yet. I have to make contact first." Micky opened her eyes again and squinted at the ET wannabe. "You've been watching too many reruns of The X Files , kid." "I've only got until my next birthday, and then all bets are off." The girl moved along the swooning fence to a point where it had entirely collapsed. She clattered across the flattened section of pickets and approached Micky. "Do you believe in life after death?" "I'm not sure I believe in life before death," Micky said. "I knew you were suicidal." "I'm not suicidal. I'm just a wiseass." Even after stepping off the splintered fence staves onto the grass, the girl moved awkwardly. "We're renting next door. We just moved in. My name's Leilani." As Leilani drew closer, Micky saw that she wore a complicated steel brace on her left leg, from the ankle to above the knee. "Isn't that a Hawaiian name?" Micky asked. "My mother's a little nuts about all things Hawaiian." Leilani wore khaki shorts. Her right leg was fine, but in the cradle of steel and padding, her left leg appeared to be malformed. "In fact," Leilani continued, "old Sinsemilla -- that's my mother -- is a little nuts, period." "Sinsemilla? That's a . . ." "Type of marijuana. Maybe she was Cindy Sue or Barbara way back in the Jurassic period, but she's called herself Sinsemilla as long as I've known her." Leilani settled into a hideous orange-and-blue chair as decrepit as Micky's bile-green lounge. "This lawn furniture sucks." "Someone gave it to Aunt Geneva for nothing." "She ought to've been paid to take it. Anyway, they put old Sinsemilla in an institution once and shot like fifty or a hundred thousand volts of electricity through her brain, but it didn't help." "You shouldn't make up stuff like that about your own mother." Leilani shrugged. "It's the truth. I couldn't make up anything as weird as what is. In fact, they blasted her brain several times. Probably, if they'd done it just once more, old Sinsemilla would've developed a taste for electricity. Now she'd be sticking her finger in a socket about ten times a day. She's an addictive personality, but she means well." Although the sky was a furnace grate, although Micky was slick with coconut-scented lotion and sweat, she'd grown all but oblivious of the sun. "How old are you, kid?" "Nine. But I'm precocious. What's your name?" "Micky." "That's a name for a boy or a mouse. So it's probably Michelle. Most women your age are named Michelle or Heather or Courtney." "My age?" "No offense intended." "It's Michelina." Leilani wrinkled her nose. "Too precious." "Michelina Bellsong." "No wonder you're suicidal." "Therefore -- Micky." "I'm Klonk." "You're what?" "Leilani Klonk." Micky cocked her head and frowned skeptically. "I'm not sure I should believe anything you tell me." "Sometimes names are destiny. Look at you. Two pretty names, and you're as gorgeous as a model -- except for all the sweat and your face puffy with a hangover." "Thanks. I guess." "Me, on the other hand -- I've got one pretty name followed by a clinker like Klonk. Half of me is sort of pretty -- " "You're very pretty," Micky assured her. This was true. Golden hair. Eyes as blue as gentian petals. The clarity of Leilani's features promised that hers was not the transient beauty of childhood, but an enduring quality. "Half of me," Leilani conceded, "might turn heads one day, but that's balanced by the fact that I'm a mutant." "You're not a mutant." The girl stamped her left foot on the ground, causing the leg brace to rattle softly. She raised her left hand, which proved to be deformed: The little finger and the ring finger were fused into a single misshapen digit that was connected by a thick web of tissue to a gnarled and stubby middle finger. Until now, Micky hadn't noticed this deformity. "Everyone's got imperfections," she said. "This isn't like having a big schnoz. I'm either a mutant or a cripple, and I refuse to be a cripple. People pity cripples, but they're afraid of mutants." "You want people to be afraid of you?" "Fear implies respect," Leilani said. "So far, you're not registering high on my terror meter." "Give me time. You've got a great body." Disconcerted to hear such a thing from a child, Micky covered her discomfort with self-deprecation: "Yeah, well, by nature I'm a huge pudding. I've got to work hard to stay like this." "No you don't. You were born perfect, and you've got one of those metabolisms tuned like a space-shuttle gyroscope. You could eat half a cow and drink a keg of beer every day, and your butt would actually tighten up a notch." Micky couldn't remember the last time that she'd been rendered speechless by anyone, but with this girl, she was nearly befuddled into silence. "How would you know?" "I can tell," Leilani assured her. "You don't run, you don't power walk -- " "I work out." "Oh? When was your last workout?" "Yesterday," Micky lied. "Yeah," said Leilani, "and I was out waltzing all night." She stamped her left foot again, rattling her leg brace. "Having a great metabolism is nothing to be ashamed about. It's not like laziness or anything." "Thanks for your approval." "Your boobs are real, aren't they?" "Girl, you are an amazing piece of work." "Thanks. They must be real. Even the best implants don't look that natural. Unless there's major improvement in implant technology, my best hope is to develop good boobs. You can be a mutant and still attract men if you've got great boobs. That's been my observation, anyway. Men can be lovely creatures, but in some ways, they're pathetically predictable." "You're nine, huh?" "My birthday was February twenty-eighth. That was Ash Wednesday this year. Do you believe in fasting and penitence?" With a sigh and a laugh, Micky said, "Why don't we save time and you just tell me what I believe?" "Probably not much of anything," Leilani said, without a pause. "Except in having fun and getting through the day." Micky was left speechless not by the child's acute perception but by hearing the truth put so bluntly, especially as this was a truth that she had long avoided contemplating. "Nothing wrong with having fun," said Leilani. "One of the things I believe, if you want to know, is that we're here to enjoy life." She shook her head. "Amazing. Men must be all over you." "Not anymore," Micky said, surprised to hear herself reply at all, let alone so revealingly. A lopsided smile tugged at the right corner of the girl's mouth, and unmistakable merriment enlivened her blue eyes. "Now don't you wish you could see me as a mutant?" "What?" "As long as you think of me as a handicapped waif, your pity doesn't allow you to be impolite. On the other hand, if you could see me as a weird and possibly dangerous mutant, you'd tell me none of this is my business, and you'd hustle me back to my own yard." "You're looking more like a mutant all the time." Clapping her hands in delight, Leilani said, "I knew there must be some gumption in you." She rose from her chair with a hitch and pointed across the backyard. "What's that thing?" "A rosebush." "No, really." "Really. It's a rosebush." "No roses." "The potential's there." "Hardly any leaves." "Lots of thorns, though," Micky noted. Squinching her face, Leilani said, "I bet it pulls up its roots late at night and creeps around the neighborhood, eating stray cats." "Lock your doors." "We don't have cats." Leilani blinked. "Oh." She grinned. "Good one." She hooked her right hand into an imitation of a claw, raked the air, and hissed. "What did you mean when you said 'all bets are off'?" "When did I say that?" Leilani asked disingenuously. "You said you've only got until your next birthday, and then all bets are off." "Oh, the alien-contact thing." Although that wasn't an answer, she turned away from Micky and crossed the lawn in a steel-stiffened gait. Micky leaned forward from the angled back of the lounge chair. "Leilani?" "I say a lot of stuff. Not all of it means anything." At the gap in the broken fence, the girl stopped and turned. "Say, Michelina Bellsong, did I ask whether you believe in life after death?" "And I was a wise-ass." "Yeah, I remember now." "So . . . do you?" Micky asked. "Do I what?" "Believe in life after death?" Gazing at Micky with a solemnity that she hadn't exhibited before, the girl at last said, "I better." As she negotiated the fallen pickets and crossed the neglected sun-browned lawn next door, the faint click-and-squeak of her leg brace faded until it could have been mistaken for the language of industrious insects hard at work in the hot, dry air. For a while after the girl had gone into the neighboring house trailer, Micky sat forward in the lounge chair, staring at the door through which she had disappeared. Leilani was a pretty package of charm, intelligence, and cocky attitude that masked an aching vulnerability. But while remembered moments of their encounter now brought a smile to Micky, she was also left with a vague uneasiness. Like a quick dark fish, some disturbing half-glimpsed truth had seemed to dart beneath the surface of their conversation, though it eluded her net. The liquid-thick heat of the late-August sun pooled around Micky. She felt as though she were floating in a hot bath. The scent of recently mown grass saturated the still air: the intoxicating essence of summer. In the distance rose the lulling rumble-hum of freeway traffic, a not unpleasant drone that might be mistaken for the rhythmic susurration of the sea. She should have grown drowsy, at least lethargic, but her mind hummed more busily than the traffic, and her body grew stiff with a tension that the sun couldn't cook from her. Although it seemed unrelated to Leilani Klonk, Micky recalled something that her aunt Geneva had said only the previous evening, over dinner. . . . "CHANGE ISN'T EASY, Micky. Changing the way you live means changing how you think. Changing how you think means changing what you believe about life. That's hard, sweetie. When we make our own misery, we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change, because the misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable." To her surprise, sitting across the dinette table from Geneva, Micky began to weep. No racking sobs. Discreet, this weeping. The plate of homemade lasagna blurred in front of her, and hot tears slid down her cheeks. She kept her fork in motion throughout this silent salty storm, loath to acknowledge what was happening to her. She hadn't cried since childhood. She'd thought that she was beyond tears, too tough for self-pity and too hardened to be moved by the plight of anyone else. With grim determination, angry with herself for this weakness, she continued eating even though her throat grew so thick with emotion that she had difficulty swallowing. Geneva, who knew her niece's stoic nature, nevertheless didn't seem surprised by the tears. She didn't comment on them, because she surely knew that consolation wouldn't be welcome. By the time Micky's vision cleared and her plate was clean, she was able to say, "I can do what I need to do. I can get where I want to go, no matter how hard it is." Geneva added one thought before changing the subject: "It's also true that sometimes -- not often, but once in a great while -- your life can change for the better in one moment of grace, almost a sort of miracle. Something so powerful can happen, someone so special come along, some precious understanding descend on you so unexpectedly that it just pivots you in a new direction, changes you forever. Girl, I'd give everything I have if that could happen for you." To stave off more tears, Micky said, "That's sweet, Aunt Gen, but everything you have doesn't amount to squat." Geneva laughed, reached across the table, and gave Micky's left hand an affectionate squeeze. "That's true enough, honey. But I've still got about half a squat more than you do." STRANGELY, here in the sunshine, less than a day later, Micky couldn't stop thinking about the transforming moment of grace that Geneva had wished for her. She didn't believe in miracles, neither the supernatural sort that involved guardian angels and the radiant hand of God revealed nor the merely statistical variety that might present her with a winning lottery ticket. Excerpted from One Door Away from Heaven by Dean Koontz All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.