Heaven and Helen spans three generation, starting with Helen Clifton who
leaves the secure life she has with her aunt to prove that she can make
something of her life, but ultimately she finds her life on an
increasingly downward spiral. Yet, in the midst of the difficulties she
experiences she finds love and desperately tries to make a life for
herself and the new found companionship. Ultimately her love’s doomed
downward cycle becomes impossible to support and she finds that she must
decide whether she will break with her new life to save herself or
follow him into the drunken oblivion that must surely be his destiny.
When pregnant with her first child she realises that she has no choice.
Despite her pregnancy Helen eventually marries and settles into family
life with a husband who she cannot love, but none of it will fill the
void left by her first love. Increasingly her life feels empty and full
of despair, again she must leave the secure life and family that she has
made, it is a decision that will have consequences that she cannot
control and risks sending her own life down a spiral of ruin. Helen’s
children grow up unaware of their mother’s past and yet they come to
realise how their lives were affected as they grew into adulthood.
Particularly affected is Helen’s eldest daughter, Arabella, or Bell.
Born to a father she never knew, and knowing nothing of his past, yet
knowing that the circumstances of her parents had been of a scandal that
had profoundly affected her mother and this drives a wedge between her
and her sisters such that she could never be close to them. In the years
that follow the tragedies of loss in one and then another world war
sees Helen’s children come to realise that they must come to terms with
the affects that the legacy of their mother’s life has had on them. As
the next generation grows however it is Arabella who finds that as she
tries to escape the legacy left by her mother that she cannot settle no
matter how far away she moves from her past. As she seeks for herself a
life that has meaning will her ambitions for one of Helen’s
granddaughters lead her down a similar road towards self destruction?
Ranging from nineteenth century Hampstead and Whitechapel to mid
twentieth century Hollywood, ‘Heaven and Helen’ tells the story of
self-willed, impulsive Helen Clifton, her own worst enemy; and her three
daughters and granddaughter; all so different from each other, yet all
equally affected by the legacy of Helen’s strange life. For more
information then go to
http://www.antrobuspages.com/RochelleJonesBooks.htm