As Bright As Heaven

This first act of the book sets up the central characters and introduces the four girls and women who will be the narrators throughout, alternating chapters with their first-person points of view. At the start of the novel, the Bright family lives in Quakertown, where the eldest daughter, Evelyn, is studious and responsible; Maggie is romantic and hopeful; and the youngest, Willa, is young, impulsive, and imaginative. Pauline is introduced as the mother of the three girls, serving as both a provider and emotional anchor, and her character most effectively sets up the novel’s focus on human responses to love, death, and grief. While Fred and Thomas are not given narrative perspectives, they still help shape the emotional atmosphere of the family in these early chapters—Fred through his visible grief and rigid patriotism and Thomas through his quieter and more observational presence. The loss of Henry affects all four point-of-view characters, and their different ways of grieving will explain and motivate their actions throughout much of Part 1.

Pauline’s perception of death as an active companion is presented not as a macabre obsession or even a grieving ritual but as a new fact of her life and self after losing Henry. This image of death as a spectral companion provides a compelling metaphor for the way Pauline feels haunted by her son’s death, but she is not angry or in denial. Her interest in Fred’s work, and her assistance, offers a way to make death seem less like an antagonistic force and more like a natural conclusion that is not to be feared. That Pauline views death with tenderness rather than dread positions her as a moral compass for the novel, a figure who reframes loss as something to be approached with reverence and grace. Her exposure to the funeral home and embalming process helps position death as an everyday part of life, rendering her loss less isolated.

Pauline’s developing perspective on death provides an important inflection point on the rest of the events of Part 1, setting up the integration between hope and despair, loss and recovery. It also establishes how experiencing the loss of a loved one changes a person, which foreshadows later loss in the Bright family. Pauline comes to think of her work in terms of a care practice that is sacred, even holy, setting up the novel’s theme of Care as a Human Imperative. In preparing bodies for a final goodbye from their loved ones, Pauline tries to make this rite of passage beautiful. She understands that this work is not permanent—in contradiction to Maggie’s hope of restoring what was lost—but her image of the human body and soul as a pairing of candle and flame describes a natural, mysterious process. That image also serves as a symbolic echo for how the characters navigate grief, holding on to the remnants of light even after the flame has gone out.

Pauline’s special relationship with death particularly foreshadows her own fate of succumbing to influenza. The novel opens with her standing at Henry’s grave, a moment that subtly marks her as already straddling the boundary between life and death, as if some part of her recognizes that she is approaching her own end. Pauline highlights the novel’s exploration of grief, which she describes as “a strange guest, making its home in a person like it’s a new thing, that no one has ever experienced before” (70). The text highlights that individual experiences of grief are unique, though the experience of pain and loss can become a force that also knits people together. Each family member internalizes Pauline’s metaphors in different ways, with Maggie echoing her mother’s sacred care for the dead, Evelyn channeling her loss into her medical ambitions, and Willa holding onto symbols like butterflies to maintain emotional connection.

The shift from the setting of their rural home in Quakertown to busy, urban Philadelphia—which offers opportunity and a better household income—introduces a sense of movement that will be followed by the stillness of loss and, later, rebuilding. Meissner gives each narrator a distinct voice, introducing the girls by their outlooks on both the move and the loss of their brother: Evelyn tries to stay practical and focused on the future, Maggie clings to hope and romanticizes change, and Willa processes everything through imagination and instinct. This blend of voices allows for a set of complementary perspectives on death and loss and introduces a strong tone of optimism and hope as each of the girls has something look forward to in Philadelphia. Evelyn, intellectually curious and ambitious, enjoys the opportunities the city has to offer. Maggie finds solace in her new relationships with Charlie and Jamie Sutcliff. Willa, the youngest, has the simplest and perhaps purest perspective. On the train, she wants to sit by the window “to watch the outside zip past like it’s trying to catch [them] and take [them] back to where [they] used to be” (13). Her reservations about Philadelphia hint that the future may not unfold as the family might wish. Willa’s point of view, often overlooked, becomes essential to the theme of Finding Fulfillment in Passion and Purpose—her emotional honesty and sensitivity to beauty are the seeds of the artistic identity she will grow into.

The backdrop of World War I casts an ominous shadow over the Bright family’s story, intensifying the stakes of grief and survival. Anti-German sentiment and wartime paranoia, embodied by Fred’s involvement in the American Protective League, reveal a culture quick to simplify blame and moralize suffering. Fred’s answer to Willa’s innocent question—“Why are people killing each other?”—offers a glimpse of this worldview: “[T]hose damn German savages responsible for all the misery in the world” (53). The first part of the novel uses this setting to show how grief is not experienced in isolation; it is compounded by a broader world in crisis, where fear and blame often replace understanding. Against this backdrop, each family member must find their own way to make sense of death—not just personal but systemic—and hold on to hope.

Fred’s easy division of the war into sides is contrasted with Jamie’s more nuanced view, communicated in his letter to Maggie from France when he observes that the French, and likely the Germans as well, are more alike than different. Jamie is moralistic, supporting the cause of fighting evil. Like Pauline’s new understanding of death, Jamie’s viewpoint speaks to the commonality of human experience, which the novel will prove is a stronger force than individual or cultural differences. That both Pauline and Jamie reject black-and-white thinking connects them across space and experience—Pauline faces the decay of the body while Jamie faces the decay of moral certainty, but both seek meaning in a world that feels fundamentally altered.