In a dusty trailer park on the far edge of the California dream, Michelina Bellsong wants to change the direction of her troubled life but can’t find her way. When a new family settles into the rental trailer next door, she meets a young girl who will change Micky–forever.

Despite her deformed left leg and withered left hand, nine-year-old Leilani Klonk radiates a buoyant and indomitable spirit that inspires Micky. Beneath Leilani’s effervescence, however, Micky comes to... (show more)

In a dusty trailer park on the far edge of the California dream, Michelina Bellsong wants to change the direction of her troubled life but can’t find her way. When a new family settles into the rental trailer next door, she meets a young girl who will change Micky–forever.

Despite her deformed left leg and withered left hand, nine-year-old Leilani Klonk radiates a buoyant and indomitable spirit that inspires Micky. Beneath Leilani’s effervescence, however, Micky comes to sense a quiet desperation that the girl dares not express. Leilani’s mother is little more than a child herself, and her stepfather is educated but threatening. Slowly, more troubling details emerge in Leilani’s conversations with Micky. Most chilling is Micky’s discovery that Leilani had an older brother, also disabled, who vanished after Maddoc took him into the woods one night and is now “gone to the stars.”

While the child-protection bureaucracy gives Micky the runaround, the Maddoc family slips away into the night. So Micky sets out across America to find them–for the first time living for something bigger than herself. Her passion and disregard for danger bring to her side a burned-out detective who joins her on her journey, a journey through terrible darkness to unexpected light. One Door Away from Heaven is an incandescent mix of suspense and humor, fear and wonder, a story of redemption and timeless wisdom that will have listeners cheering. (show less)