On Earth As It Is In Heaven
To turn earth into heaven is impossible but the people in this collection of eleven stories hope that at least a small chunk of heaven can brighten their patch on earth. The celestial slice that each one desires is different. For instance: In “Pigs is Pigs and Eggs is Eggs,” a doctor and his relatives are at loggerheads as to whether England will be more of a paradise if a splash of Pakistan is added. In “ At Home and Away” a doctor who flees his homeland due to civil war struggles to make a new life in the American Midwest. The father in “Father’s Day” is desperate to understand his son while the mother in “Spiders” struggles to live without hers. A Sri Lankan aboriginal finds (and then loses) her paradise when confronted with visiting researchers in “The English Widow.” How much of heaven are they actually able to get?