Autorentext

One of the most popular authors of all time, V.C. Andrews has been a bestselling phenomenon since the publication of Flowers in the Attic, first in the renowned Dollanganger family series, which includes Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and Garden of Shadows. The family saga continues with Christopher’s Diary: Secrets of Foxworth, Christopher’s Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger, and Secret Brother, as well as Beneath the Attic, Out of the Attic, and Shadows of Foxworth as part of the fortieth anniversary celebration. There are more than ninety V.C. Andrews novels, which have sold over 107 million copies worldwide and have been translated into more than twenty-five foreign languages. Andrews’s life story is told in The Woman Beyond the Attic. Join the conversation about the world of V.C. Andrews at Facebook.com/OfficialVCAndrews.

Klappentext

Of all the folks in the mountain shacks, the Casteels are the lowest - the scum of the hills. Heaven Leigh Casteel is the prettiest, smartest girl in the backwoods, despite her ragged clothes and dirty face ... despite a father meaner than ten vipers ... despite her weary stepmother, who works her like a mule. For her brother Tom and the little ones, Heaven clings to her pride and her hopes. Someday they'll get away and show the world that they are decent, fine and talented; worthy of love and respect. Then Heaven's stepmother runs off, and her wicked, greedy father has a scheme - a vicious scheme that threatens to destroy the precious dream of Heaven and the children forever!

Zusammenfassung
From the legendary New York Times bestselling author of Flowers in the Attic and My Sweet Audrina (now Lifetime movies) comes the first book in the Casteel Family series—for fans of Emma Donoghue (Room) and Kay Hooper (Amanda).

Of all the folks on the mountain, the Casteel children are the lowest.

Even the families that buy them think so.

Heaven Leigh Casteel may be the prettiest, smartest girl in the backwoods, but her cruel father and weary stepmother work her like a mule. For the sake of her brother Tom and the other little ones, Heaven clings to the hope that someday she can show the world that they are worthy of love and respect.

But when the children’s stepmother can’t take it anymore and abandons the family, Heaven’s father hatches a scheme that will alter her young life forever. Being sold to a strange couple is just the beginning; ripping away the thin veneer of civilization and learning the adult secrets of the world around her means Heaven must abandon someone, too—the child she was, to become the woman her mother never had the chance to be.

Leseprobe
Heaven

one

THE WAY IT USED TO BE

IF JESUS DIED ALMOST TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO TO save us all from the worst we had in us, he’d failed in our area, except on Sundays between the hours of ten A.M. and noon. At least in my opinion.

But what was my opinion? Worthy as onion peelings, I thought, as I pondered how Pa had married Sarah two months after my mother died in childbirth—and he’d loved his “angel” so much. And four months after I was born and my mother was buried, Sarah gave birth to the son Pa had so wanted when I came along and ended my mother’s brief stay on earth.

I was too young to remember the birth of this first son, who was christened Thomas Luke Casteel the Second, and they put him, so I’ve been told, in the cradle with me, and like twins we were rocked, nursed, held, but not equally loved. No one had to tell me that.

I loved Tom with his fire-red hair inherited from Sarah, and his flashing green eyes, also inherited from his mother. There was nothing in him at all to remind me of Pa, except later he did grow very tall.

After hearing Granny’s tale of my true mother on the eve of my tenth birthday, I determined never, so help me God, never would I tell my brother Tom any different from what he already believed, that Heaven Leigh Casteel was his own true whole-blood sister. I wanted to keep that special something that made us almost one person. His thoughts and my thoughts were very much alike because we’d shared the same cradle, and had communicated silently soon after we were born, and that had to make us special. Being special was of great importance to both of us, I guess because we feared so much we weren’t.

Sarah stood six feet tall without shoes. An Amazon mate very suitable for a man as tall and powerful as Pa. Sarah was never sick. According to Granny (whom Tom sometimes jokingly called Wisdom Mouth), the birth of Tom gave Sarah a mature bustline, so full it appeared matronly when she was still fourteen.

“An,” informed Granny, “even afta givin birth, Sarah would get up soon as it was ova, pick up what chore she’d left unfinished, jus as if she hadn’t undergone t’most awful ordeal we women have t’suffa through without complaint. Why, Sarah could cook while tryin t’encourage a newborn baby t’suckle.” Yeah, thought I, her robust good health must be her main attraction for Pa. He didn’t seem to admire Sarah’s type of beauty much, but at least she wasn’t likely to die in childbirth and leave him in a pit of black despair.

One year after Tom came Fanny, with her jet-black hair like Pa’s, her dark blue eyes turning almost black before she was a year old. An Indian girl was our Fanny, browner than a berry, but very seldom happy about anything.

Four years after Fanny came Keith, named after Sarah’s long-dead father. Keith had the sweetest pale auburn hair, you just had to love him right from the beginning—especially when he turned out to be very quiet, hardly any bother at all, not wailing, screaming, and demanding all the time as Fanny had—and still did. Eventually Keith’s blue eyes turned topaz, his skin rivaled the peaches-and-cream complexion lots of people said I had, though I didn’t truly know since I wasn’t given much to peering into our cracked and poorly reflecting mirror.

Keith grew to be an exceptionally good little boy who appreciated beauty so much that when a new baby came along the year after he was born, he would sit for hours and hours just gazing at the delicate little girl who was sickly from the very beginning. Pretty as a tiny doll was this new little sister that Sarah allowed me to name, and Jane she became, since at that time I’d seen a Jane on a magazine cover, too pretty to believe.

Jane had soft wisps of pale golden-red hair, huge aqua eyes, long dark curling lashes that she’d flutter as she lay discontentedly in the cradle gazing at Keith. Occasionally Keith would reach to rock the cradle, and that would make her smile, a smile of such disarming sweetness you’d do anything just to see that smile come out like sunshine after the rain.

After Jane was born she began to dominate our lives. To bring a smile to Jane’s angelic face became the loving and dutiful obligation of all of us. To make her laugh instead of wail was my own special delight. Time to rejoice when Jane could smile instead of whine from mysterious aches and pains she couldn’t name. And in this, as in everything else, what I enjoyed doing was what Fanny had to spoil.

“Ya give her t’me!” screamed Fanny, running with her long, skinny legs to kick my shins before she darted away and called from a safe place in our dirt yard, “She’s our Jane—not yers! Not Tom’s! Not Keith’s! OURS! Everythin here is OURS, not yers alone! Heaven Leigh Casteel!”
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