WELL BELOW HEAVEN

A coming-of-age debut novel unspools
through the correspondence between a young teenager and his older sister, who
is in a juvenile detention program.

In this compelling and unsettling YA
tale, 17-year-old Kelly Cantz has been sent to a school for troubled girls in
the Idaho mountains, leaving her 13-year-old brother, Sammy, back in Missouri.
He is left to cope alone with his parents’ crumbling marriage and their
obsessive worry that he’ll follow in his sister’s footsteps and use drugs. In
letters that take place over nearly a year, the siblings tell each other what
is happening in their lives. Sammy writes about the minefield of early
adolescence, dysfunctional adults (including one twisted teacher), bullying and
sexually predatory older teens, and the outlets he finds in dark poetry and his
growing prowess in football. Rebellious Kelly’s reports on her school
experiences in the mountains are scathing, but her concern for her brother is
evident, as is her alarm when his peripheral involvement with her unsavory
former high school friends becomes something more. Although the flawed adults
are observed only through the siblings’ eyes, the parents have
between-the-lines dimension. While believably self-absorbed in their marital
conflict, they offer moments of parental connection (between Dad’s absenteeism
and Mom’s suffocating anxiety). But they are oblivious to what Kelly knows is
the real danger: Sammy’s attraction to one of the older girls, leading to a
series of shocking incidents—involving a secret cave, self-mutilation, and teen
pornography—that will change both siblings’ lives. That these events don’t feel
gratuitous is due to Eliot’s skill in building up to them and to the achingly realistic
voices revealed through Kelly’s and Sammy’s letters, reflecting the teens’
angst, anger, betrayals, triumphs, new insights, and the subtle changes that
take place with the passage of time and their life experiences. It is that
authenticity that makes it gut-wrenching when the author has Sammy discover the
extent of Kelly’s transgressions and seemingly lose the only person he can
trust.

A well-told, unsparing, and
increasingly disturbing journey through unmoored adolescence.