Hotline Heaven Hardcover - 1998 - 1st Edition

From the publisher

Monk and Jo are a suffering pair who came together one night on Hotline Heaven. She was the caller, he was the voice up there. That was five years ago, before he became Home-Mart Man of the Month and she became the baker at The Cake & Coffee.

Presently, Monk's quest is to supervise the construction of the first Mega Home-Mart in the country while Jo's is to create the cake of a lifetime. Their quests have more to do with working up their wills to live than with building and baking.

Why so many rough spots on the road? Monk's agony stems from a dead red-haired son named Micky, buried by a sassafras tree. Micky loved seeds -- "watermelon, apple, sunflower, all kinds" -- and Monk's convinced that those culprits planted the brain rumor that killed him. "All that crunching did something to his head. Set off some bad cells. My ex used to say, if that the way you think, you're next?" Jo's pain goes way back, to the mysterious day her father took a canoe out on a lake and blasted himself out of this miserable world. Needless to say, it all messed with Jo's mind. What would she do to squint out just one clear memory of him? Maybe jump off a rock into the rapids! But life goes on.

When Monk runs into difficulty at work, and Jo is pressured to create the cake of her lifetime, their lives begin to unravel.

"Hotline Heaven" is a dark, lyrical comedy about a middle-age couple in love, whose pasts beat them down. But the message -- like the one that saved Jo five years ago -- is that life triumphs.