cover image Proof of Heaven

Proof of Heaven

Mary Curran Hackett. Morrow, $14.99 trade paper (336p) ISBN 978-0-06-207998-5

At the center of Curran’s first novel is Colm Magee. Abandoned by his father before birth, much loved by Cathleen, his mother, Colm has a condition that eludes diagnosis: his heart stops beating without warning, and resuscitation is increasingly difficult. Medical science provides no answers until they come across Dr. Basu, who has lost a son of his own and who makes an immediate connection to Colm and Cathleen both. Dr. Basu pinpoints the diagnosis, one that provides no hope or treatment, and so Cathleen digs ever deeper into her religious convictions. But Colm, by the age of seven, has rejected the idea of God and heaven, a fact he doesn’t want to share with his mother. In Dr. Basu he finds a mind more like his own, though initially his mother’s not too sure. In Cathleen, Dr. Basu sees an example of “grief never ceasing to transform,” and indeed the focus on her struggle to reconcile faith and loss both overwhelms and undercuts an otherwise interesting premise that the author took from her own life. (Nov.)