What was pastures of heavens about?

Answer 1

The Pastures of Heaven is a novel about a "curse" basically flowing through a beautiful valley, the Pastures of Heaven. The Munroe family moves into a home which is joking (and secretly seriously) believed to be cursed; as the family moves in, Mr. Munroe believes he must be cursed to have had so many business ventures fail. But when the Munroes move in, all seems to go well. It's as if the curse is gone; Munroe jokes his curse must have gotten into a fight with the curse on the house and they essentially canceled each other out. The town gossip however, remarks maybe they instead mated like two snakes and will produce lots of little babies. This leads into the rest of the novel as a reader can trace the signs of a curse through every other chapter in the book. Each chapter deals with a different family or person in the valley, and each one has terrible luck in some way-- people die, homes destroyed, several people forced out of the valley (and on that note, there are Garden of Eden undertones throughout the book as well to watch for), etc-- all because of the curse which Munroe has brought-- and Munroe has contact with each of these people/families when the bad luck hits.