Maybe in Heaven

“A haunting tale of addiction, trauma, and survival that captures the dim glow of lost stardom.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Glamorous May Deville is headed for destruction as she drinks away the 1950s at her husband’s bar. Memories of her vaudeville days, triggered by the death of the stage mother who made her a child star, just make her drink harder. But when a beautiful stranger convinces her husband, Ace, to dream of the big time, May must sober up if she wants to survive. Maybe in Heaven is the strange, decadent portrait of a lost woman fighting against a bitter little world—in which gender is a performance and love is a con.

Fans of Charles Jackson’s The Lost Weekend, Gypsy Rose Lee’s Gypsy, and Megan Abbott’s Queenpin will enjoy the style of this fever-dream thriller and its cast of ruthless females. At last call, Maybe in Heaven is an intoxicating love letter to noir, and to art itself.

Francesca Penchant is an American writer, publisher, and award-winning designer who teaches editing at the University of Washington. She is a devotee of Neo-Decadence, a contemporary art movement influenced by the Decadent movement of the late nineteenth century. Penchant has an MFA specializing in book arts, and lives in Seattle with her husband. Maybe in Heaven is her first novel.