One Door Away From Heaven

Micky Bellsong has a history of making wrong choices, not least in men. Her life has no meaning or direction; she wants to change but can't find her way. She has moved in temporarily with her aunt, who lives in a dusty trailer park on the far edge of the California dream. There she meets Leilani, a precocious, radiant, dazzlingly charming nine-year-old. Although Leilani's left leg requires a brace and her left hand is deformed as well, she is buoyant and indomitable; her great spirit begins to inspire change in Micky.

Leilani's strange stepfather, Preston Maddoc, claims to have had a vision that aliens will either heal the girl by her tenth birthday or take her away with them to their world, where she can have a better life. When Micky discovers that Leilani had an older brother, that he was also disabled, and that he is now "gone to the stars", she suspects that Maddoc killed the boy when a previous "vision" of alien healers wasn't fulfilled. Underneath Leilani's charm and buoyancy, Micky now sees a quiet desperation and a fear that the girl dares not express.

Then the Maddocs disappear.

Leilani's tenth birthday is nine months away. Micky is convinced that in nine months and one day, the girl will be dead. And no one seems to care but Micky herself. To the surprise of everyone who knows her - indeed, surprising even herself - Micky is for the first time living for something bigger than her own desires, for someone other than herself.

She sets out across America to track and to find the Maddocs, alone and afraid, but increasingly obsessed - and discovers that she has pitted herself against an adversary as fearsome as he is cunning. Her journey is one of incredible peril and stunning discoveries, a journey filled with tragedy and joy, with humour, terror and hope, a journey that will change her for ever.