As Bright As Heaven

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, death, and child death.

Pauline is one of the protagonists of the novel and, in Part 1, one of the four first-person narrators. In 1918, Pauline is in her mid-thirties and has been married for almost 17 years to Thomas Bright, who grew up with her in the small Pennsylvania town of Quakertown. Pauline is the daughter of the Adlers. She describes her parents as kind but not demonstrative, and that might be one reason why Pauline is warm and communicative with her daughters. She and Thomas have three girls: Evelyn, Margaret, and Willa.

Baby Henry, born six years after Willa, is an unexpected joy, and Pauline forms a special attachment to him since he is such a quiet, pliant child. Henry dies when he is only a few months old due to a heart condition that is diagnosed by a specialist in Philadelphia. The grief at his loss devastates the entire Bright family, but Pauline, especially, feels haunted by his loss, to the point that she imagines death as a spectral companion that is always with her. Losing Henry is one reason why Pauline encourages Thomas to take his uncle Fred’s offer to hand over his funeral home business.