Only Twice I’Ve Wished for Heaven: A Novel

In 1975, Tempestt Saville and her family are chosen by lottery to "move on up" to Lakeland: one square mile of sparkling apartment towers and emerald lawns where the Black elite live sheltered from the ghetto by a ten-foot-tall, ivy-covered wrought-iron fence.Eleven-year-old Temmy doesn't enjoy the privilege, however, and thinks Lakeland is the "kingdom of the drab."Instead, she is drawn to the vivid world outside the fence: to 35th Street, where the saved and the sinners are both so "done up" you can't tell one from the other.Tempestt's curiosity soon leads her down a dangerous path, however, and after witnessing the death of a friend, she sets into motion a chain of events that will send 35th Street up in flames."

Dawn Turner Trice, an editor for the Chicago Tribune, lives outside Chicago with her husband and daughter. She is at work on her second novel.