Falling to Heaven

Jeanne Peterson’s novel (Oneworld, £8.99) is set in Tibet, at the highest pass of the Himalayas. It’s 1954, when silence reigns, apart from the flapping of prayer flags, and where life really is heavenly. That is, until the arrival of Maoist soldiers, who turn everything upside down — lives, morality — and heaven becomes hell.

The story follows the lives of an American couple and their Tibetan neighbours. Emma and Gerald have come on foot to a remote Tibetan village, intending to make it their home. They have sorrows in their past, and present sorrows too, but are full of hope as they are welcomed by their Tibetan neighbours, Dorje and Rinchen. That hope vanishes from both families in one fell swoop with the arrival of the Maoists, and Gerald is captured and taken away.

Emma is left with the unexpected joy of pregnancy and the deepest reaches of despair; Gerald has to suffer unimaginably at the hands of his Chinese prison guards. Dorje and Rinchen’s family is torn apart as one son tries to stay faithful to his pacifist beliefs, and the other son chooses the path of violence as he leaves the monastery to fight with the resistance.

Successive chapters are narrated alternately by the various characters in the story, lending their different voices and different viewpoints, different experiences. The hope and happiness at the start of the book is replaced with faith in adversity and resolution of spirit.

The story is an agonising one, and all the more emotive for being based on the truth. In Falling to Heaven, Peterson has created an intensely evocative book, uplifting and heartbreaking in equal measures.