The High Heaven. A Novel (en Inglés) - Joshua Wheeler

A multigenre debut novel tracing one woman’s quest for faith across the American West during the Space Age

In 1967, on the night of the first Apollo mission, a child named Izzy is orphaned when the doomsday cult she was born into clashes with the sheriff in the high desert of New Mexico. She’s taken in by a struggling rancher who is trying to keep his mind from falling apart as NASA rocket tests encroach on his outer range. Inspired by the true story of a UFO cult in a village near White Sands, this novel traces Izzy Gently’s whole life: from tragedy on the ranch, through addiction and a rich cast of eccentrics in Texas, to New Orleans, where Izzy is haunted by her past even as she uses lessons from childhood to counsel people who have lost the ability to see the moon.

In The High Heaven, Joshua Wheeler explores American piety as it mutates over the course of the Space Age, as technology changes notions of both humanity and the heavens. Shot through with the speculative while paying homage to three iconic genres—neo-Western, picaresque, and Southern gothic—Izzy’s life story becomes a mirror for the warping of manifest destiny and, ultimately, a testament to the human will to seek meaning from the universe.

Suffused with the absurdist history of American space travel and the wide-open landscapes of the Southwest, The High Heaven chronicles a larger-than-life adventure of one extraordinary woman who, despite tragedy, never loses sight of redemption.

“In [Wheeler’s] first novel, composed in weird and luminous prose and based on a true story, he interrogates powerful ambivalence about religion and explores the possibilities of transcendence.”—Brendan Driscoll, Booklist, starred review

“Paying homage to Southern gothics and Westerns, The High Heaven explores the Space Age in a wickedly stunning narrative.”—Sam Franzini, Our Culture

“As school goes back in sessions and the cicadas slow their screaming, is there anything better to read than a bildungsroman? How about a Space Age bildungsroman by Josh Wheeler, gonzo-genius author of the radioactive essay collection Acid West?”—C. Morgan Babst, Garden & Gun

“Wheeler marries a memoirist’s skill for exposition to a poet’s knack for image and sound. . . . Since reading The High Heaven, I’ve found myself especially aware of the moon as it rises over my patch of New Mexico.”—Jake Bartman, Full Stop

“Joshua Wheeler’s debut novel has got me rethinking my stake in the universe. . . . Oliver and Izzy’s buddy exploits are the most entrancing first 100 pages of a book I’ve read in some time. . . . Even when Izzy’s journey descends into dark territories, Wheeler . . . writes like he’s having a blast.”—Rien Fertel, The Times-Picayune


“True Grit meets Philip K. Dick as Wheeler expertly limns his heroine’s space-age travels in prose that skitters between lyrical and vernacular and sticks the landing.”—Paul Wilner, Alta Journal

“With shimmering intelligence and innovative grace, this assured, prismatic debut fuses earthbound struggle and cosmic wonder. Giving a nod to America's richest literary traditions, Joshua Wheeler has unleashed a wildly entertaining, daringly original, genre­blending vision. The High Heaven deftly traces the evolution of faith and technology, illuminating how our boundless aspirations reshape our sense of what it means to be human.”—Kimberly King Parsons, author of We Were the Universe

“The High Heaven is Dickens dropping acid in the desert of 1960s New Mexico, having visions of outer space and America that may be of the past, present, or future, but that, under the spell of Joshua Wheeler’s poetic sentences, fuse into an act of supreme imagination.”—Fernando A. Flores, author of Brother Brontë

“The High Heaven contains the gritty strangeness of New Mexico and Texas and the gothic allure of New Orleans, full of struggle, despair, and hope. Joshua Wheeler writes with great precision and wild, exceptional vision. What a book! I loved this novel.”—Brandon Hobson, author of The Devil Is a Southpaw

“An astonishing novel, a tour de force. Not since Lee K. Abbott has a writer heard the music of the hinterlands so keenly and put it on paper with such exuberance, such glee, such grace. Joshua Wheeler’s talent is searing.”—Claire Vaye Watkins, author of I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness