When Thomas is called into service and the Spanish flu breaks out in Philadelphia, Pauline and her daughters must come together to survive.
They convince the men to allow them roles in the business, and, in confronting death head-on, begin to process the overwhelming shadow of grief that Henry’s death has cast over the family. Although initially forbidden from entering the embalming rooms, Pauline and Maggie are unable to suppress their curiosity. In need of a fresh start, Thomas and his wife, Pauline, agree and immediately move to Philadelphia with their three daughters, Evelyn, Maggie, and Willa. Henry’s father, Thomas Bright, has just received an offer from his childless uncle-an undertaker in Philadelphia-to relocate from Quakertown, PA and train to take over the funeral parlour business.
The Bright family is grieving the loss of their infant son, Henry, born with a too-weak heart. The story opens in January 1918, eight months before the flu pandemic reached Philadelphia and ten months before the end of the war. In her acknowledgments she explains that she “is always on the lookout for untold stories from the past that reveal the resiliency of the human spirit despite incredibly difficult circumstances.” She goes on to add, “this historic pandemic is.millions of untold stories… arguably one of the deadliest diseases in history.” The choice of this lesser-known global disaster as the backdrop for her story about life and love after loss was an astute one, making her observations on the effects of death all the more poignant. Fortunately, I read it on vacation this summer and had plenty of time to read just one more chapter.Īs a result of her thoroughly executed research, Susan Meissner believably recreates mid-war Philadelphia, astutely portraying the horror of living through a sweeping pandemic that shows no mercy.
I expected the same of As Bright As Heaven, described on its jacket as “the compelling story of a mother and her daughters who find themselves in a harsh world not of their making that will either crush their resolve to survive or purify it,” and though it took somewhat longer for me to become absorbed in it, it too eventually gripped my attention. I fell in love with Susan Meissner’s writing last year when I read Secrets of a Charmed Life , a novel that hooked me from the first chapters and refused to let go.
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