As Bright As Heaven

While the major movements of Part 1 are loss and grief, Part 2 later turns toward recovery. The characters are trying to heal and move forward, yet they are conscious of their losses and the things they can never regain. This tonal shift brings new emotional stakes into focus. While the questions of Part 1 address how to understand and survive significant loss, the questions of Part 2 focus more on choices, their impact on a life’s direction, and how to handle the consequences that arise. These chapters bring forth new loves, new interests, and new attractions, but they also resurface old loves. Jamie’s return presages the stunning discovery about Alex’s identity, which will shift the foundations of the family and bring into sharp focus the question of when a choice is right. This evolution from reactive grief to proactive decision-making marks a maturation in the novel’s emotional logic, one in which healing requires not only endurance but also agency.

With the loss of Pauline, the point-of-view characters are reduced to three, the Bright daughters, and the narrative structure grows. Willa is now 14, Maggie is 20, and Evelyn is 23, and while the girls have matured, their voices are still distinct and characteristic. Willa is self-centered, Maggie is curious, and Evelyn is the peacekeeper, mentor, and healer. Each sister mourns the loss of their mother but continues to have her own imagined relationship with her. Willa’s relationship is mostly motivated by guilt, as she feels responsible for giving Pauline the flu. Maggie has taken over Pauline’s work in the embalming room, assisting her father in preparing the bodies for viewing and burial. Evelyn has made a profession of providing care, a behavior she saw modeled in her mother. Each daughter embodies a different expression of care as a human imperative: Willa offers aesthetic escape through singing, Maggie provides ritual comfort to families coping with loss, and Evelyn seeks clinical healing. Their paths diverge, yet all stem from Pauline’s influence.

Even as the major historical crises fade from view, their impact lingers. The war and flu are background conflicts now—something the characters have survived, though not unscathed. Evelyn reflects, “Our injuries were hidden deep within our psyches. That was where we needed the balm that would heal us” (250). Willa’s method of coping is her musical talent, which introduces the theme of Finding Fulfillment in Passion and Purpose. Maggie’s recovery is slower and more cautious. She is torn between wanting to fall in love and wanting to stay where she is, where she is known and safe. She is also torn between her love for Jamie and her wish to fall in love with Palmer; when the former finally returns, she is pulled between her heart and her head, as Palmer offers a safe future, but Jamie is her long-lost love. He embodies the pain of the war, which is part of what ties Maggie to all that is familiar in Philadelphia. Evelyn’s interest in healing, meanwhile, gives her an overt stake in recovery; she has made it her life’s work. She is the sister who already seems fulfilled, interested in her work, and motivated to help her patients. However, she, too, meets her own challenges in the limits of her profession. Sybil Reese is proof that there are some illnesses that cannot be healed and some losses that cannot be mended. This recognition complicates Evelyn’s optimism and adds emotional weight to her developing relationship with Conrad—he represents not only personal possibility but also a shared intimacy with the limits of care.

Intertwined with memories of what the narrators have survived is a nostalgia for the way things were, a bittersweet counterpoint to the emphasis on progress and healing. Thomas offers a steady and nurturing presence for the girls as a support and a guide, but he will, in one sense, never move on from the loss of his wife. The image of childish innocence that Willa conjures onstage as Sweet Polly Adler—a variation of her mother’s name—is designed to transport her audience to sweeter, kinder times. Fairview Asylum attempts to make its environs pleasing and comfortable for patients, but it is still a facility caring for those with illnesses. Maggie’s perception of Jamie, when he returns, balances the young man he was with the man he is now, worn and changed by what he has endured; in some ways, he is a symbol for the ways they have all been marked. Yet his retention of Maggie’s letters symbolizes a link to the past that Maggie feels must be explored in order to discover whether this looking back is harmful, merely a pleasant reminder, or a promise of hope and love for the future. The letters, weathered and unread yet preserved, stand as a metaphor for Maggie’s internal life—she has kept her love dormant but intact, unsure whether it still belongs in the world she lives in now.

The theme of Care as a Human Imperative surfaces in Evelyn’s work and, more distinctly, in the contrast between the care that the Brights have given to Alex and the reluctant provision that Rita Daubney has made for Ursula. While Alex gave the Bright family a reason to go on, Ursula is, conversely, a reminder of loss for Rita and Cal, who both believe that Ursula is responsible for the death of Leo, who is Alex. Rita’s remark that Ursula doesn’t belong to her because she isn’t related by blood contrasts the sense of obligation and care that the Brights hold for Alex. Rita represents a survival that is bitter and forced, a moral compulsion but not a heartfelt choice. The Brights, on the other hand, have taken joy in Alex, and the idea of him moving to Manhattan with Maggie and Palmer presents another rift in the family fabric, just like losing Pauline. This contrast invites the reader to consider what defines family: legal claim, biology, or emotional investment. Through the Brights, Meissner argues that love enacted over time—the daily rituals of protection, joy, and presence—is the most authentic form of kinship, especially after loss. Separating would perhaps undo some of the happiness they have found.

Though the year is 1925, the decade known as the Roaring Twenties in the US, there is a slightly ominous tone to the setting of Prohibition with the suggestion of gangsters and the criminal activity that has arisen around the manufacture, smuggling, and sale of illegal or “bootleg” liquor. Dora’s prejudice about people who consume or abuse alcohol parallels the prejudices that Fred had toward “slackers.” Dora feels strongly that people should be accountable for the destruction they wreak, while Evelyn reflects on how substance use or addiction can indicate mental or emotional wounds that are difficult to heal. Willa’s presence in the speakeasy space—one of glamor, danger, and escape—suggests that healing isn’t always quiet or clinical. Sometimes, the pursuit of joy, even when reckless, becomes a tool of emotional survival. The thread that concludes this section—of needing to find answers—provides a compelling step forward into the next and final act, which will provide the conflict and resolution of the dramatic arc.