A Step from Heaven is written by Anna, a Korean woman who was an immigrant to America. Anna’s family thought America is heaven but their experiences changed the idea. She had many struggles because of her father’s abuses but she overcame the problem and started a better life. This enjoyable book tells all about her life time in America and it is really interesting to follow her growth as pages of the book go on.


Young Ju, the main character of this book moved to America when she was 4 years old because her parents believed America is a perfect place like heaven. They believed once they immigrated, they will have a glorious life which consists of a great job, a house, and enough supplies for a wonderful living. They will sooner figure out that life in America was totally opposite to heaven and even not a step from heaven. Young Ju’s family goes out of mind because their expectations and hopes were all gone. When her grandmother died, the situation went worse. Especially when father became intoxicated to alcohol and abused his children and wife. As Young Ju grew up, she solved the problem and could finally start a new and better life in America.


I strongly recommend this book for all teenagers, especially those who studied in an international school because there are so many immigrant students in their classes. I am also one who immigrated to Thailand from Japan and had many struggles to overcome, so I could feel sympathy to some of the stories which automatically made me to continue flipping the pages. Also, currently, family abuse problems are everywhere, which we need to prevent. I want all of the readers to think about abuses more seriously after they have read the book.