Only Twice I’ve Wished for Heaven

In 1975 young Tempestt Saville and her family are chosen by lottery to "move on up" to Lakeland: one square mile of rich black soil carved out of a Chicago ghetto, cradling sparkling apartment towers and emerald lawns where the elite of black professionals live in privilege, secure behind a ten-foot-tall, ivy-covered wrought-iron fence.

But eleven-year-old Temmy is drawn to the world outside the fence, to 35th Street, a place of colorful, often dangerous, characters. Here the saved and the sinners are both so "done up" you can't tell one from the other: among them, Alfred Mayes, the oily street preacher and connoisseur of "fine young thangs", whose line is as smooth as honey and whose looks are twice as sweet; and Miss Jonetta, a former lady of the evening, who knows everyone's story, and whose own history is as long and dark as 35th Street. Before a month has passed at Lakeland, Tempestt will witness the death of a friend, cause the arrest of a preacher, and start a chain of events that will send 35th Street up in flames.

Only Twice l've Wished for Heaven is a tale of love and loss told by characters as vivid as the times they live in and as complex as the rage they try to bury.