Heart to Heart
Author: Lurlene McDaniel
Publisher: Delacorte Press/Random House Publishing Group
Publication: June 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-73460-8
Ages: 12 and up
Lurlene McDaniel, author of 40+ inspirational novels, is best-known for work addressing kids/young adults facing life-threatening challenges. Not everyone understands why she chooses to write “sad” novels: “I tell them that sometimes tragedy hits people—kids, too,” McDaniel says on her Random House author site. “They want answers. They want to know ‘why.’ By using novels, I show ordinary kids confronting and overcoming great odds.”
Beginning with that premise, reading the author’s new book, Heart to Heart is challenging, but not intimidating.
Sixteen-year-old Elowyn Eden is thrilled, as is any teen, to get her driver’s license and a car to go along with it. But, her new ride ultimately becomes the instrument of her demise—and the vehicle of life for fifteen-year-old Arabeth St. Clair, who has been sick her entire life and in need of a heart transplant for many years.
It is difficult for all involved—Elowyn’s best friend, Kassey; Elowyn’s boyfriend, Wyatt; Kassey’s mom; Arabeth’s mom and, of course, Elowyn’s parents—to deal with the sudden death and life-giving donation of Elowyn, who had checked the organ donor box on her driver’s license. But, for Arabeth, it is especially difficult, as she finds that her new heart comes with more than just tissue and a new lease on life; it also brings the memories of its former owner to her body via the highly controversial phenomena, “cellular memory.” And, while Elowyn’s friends and family are comforted by the likenesses they kept seeing between Arabeth and the girl they had loved, Arabeth simply wants peace: “In the quiet of the summer night, all I wanted was for Elowyn to step out of my life and leave me alone” (p. 152).
It is interesting to see how McDaniel brings the donor family together with the recipient family, following them as they attempt to have a relationship, bonded forever, yet always separated, as the heart of one daughter pumps life through the body of the other. The pain of one family is balanced by the joy of another, and as tenuous relationships form, it becomes easier to see why contact between donor and recipient families, while bringing comfort on some level, is often discouraged—at least, not readily encouraged.
Also, from a native Georgian’s point of view, the added familiarity of the storyline taking place in the city of Alpharetta and at different points about the Atlanta Metro area, including, prominently and repeatedly, Emory Medical, was interesting, as well as somewhat haunting. “Do things like this really happen so close to home?” one may keep asking. The answer is yes—things like this happen close to home no matter where one lives.
Still, I do not feel this is a “sad” novel. It is an eye-opener, to be sure, but sometimes we all need a bit of eye-opening. And, not only does it shed light on the positives of organ donation, it also touches upon that very live topic in the news and throughout society today: the potential consequences of texting while driving. Georgia, specifically, recently signed a law banning texting while driving, so this story is particularly timely.
Overall, I find it uplifting, enlightening and, yes, although it does leave an ache in one’s soul for the loss of one life, it also makes one’s heart soar at the opportunities opened up for another.
Get your copy of Lurlene McDaniel’s Heart to Heart at one of the 700+ bookstores in Georgia.
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