If you’re looking for a work of fiction that will encourage and challenge you in your Christian life, Elizabeth Prentiss has written just the book for you. Stepping Heavenward is a quiet read, a thought-provoking story of an ordinary life.
Stepping Heavenward is not a long book; it’s somewhere near the length of Northanger Abbey or Anne of Green Gables. It’s decidedly a girls’ book, although a boy who enjoys literature might like it. Since it is very introspective, it’s not likely very young readers will find it interesting. I would recommend it for 12+.
As usual, my brief conclusion is at the bottom along with a link to the ebook version; for full details, read straight on through!
The Plot
Stepping Heavenward is the story of a young girl who grew up in a Christian home and gradually grows in her Christian character. It’s not an exciting sort of book, and since it is written as a diary it has almost no foreshadowing, and not much plot in the ordinary sense of the word. Katherine grows up, gets married, people around her die, grow up, etc. It’s realistic and fairly interesting, but like I said, not exciting; a brilliant plot is not its selling point.
6/10
The Point
Few works of fiction are as thought-provoking and spiritually encouraging as Stepping Heavenward. Prentiss had many opportunities through the book of offering profound reflections, and she makes good use of them. To quote a couple examples that stood out to me:
“It is a religion of principle that God wants from us, not one of mere feeling.”
“I want to see little children adorning every home, as flowers adorn every meadow and every wayside. I want to see them welcomed to the homes they enter, to see their parents grow less and less selfish, and more and more loving, because they have come. I want to see God’s precious gifts accepted, not frowned upon and refused.”
Theologically the book is an excellent one, tracing life to its ultimate goal: to glorify God and enjoy him forever. What’s more, although unapologetically Christian, preachy is not a word I could use to describe it. In nine out of ten instances, the moral reflections flow absolutely naturally from the story, and the overall point is smoothly integrated.
I almost gave Stepping Heavenward 10/10; but as mentioned above, once in a while the moral reflections were not quite as well integrated as they could have been.
9/10
The Style
Stepping Heavenward is written as a first person narrative—a diary, in fact. I’m highly critical of first person narratives; I think it’s very hard to pull off without making the first person sound either like a cocky jerk or a spiritless nobody. It’s hard to write about “yourself” without sounding like one or the other. But Prentiss impressed me; I don’t know if it was the diary format that made first person sound more natural, or what exactly, but Katherine certainly has her own personality, with strengths and weaknesses that are well developed in the course of the book. Only once did Prentiss have to break the diary format in order to keep the plotline going by inserting a letter between two secondary characters (strictly speaking, I’m not sure the letter was necessary, but it brought in some humor and did make things clearer).
The writing style per se is not striking; but it has no reason to be. Literary flourishes would have been out of place in a first person diary story. As the book moves on and Katherine matures her diary entries are less rambling—a necessary character progression, but making for a more interesting first half.
8/10
Conclusion
8 (7.6)/10
Stepping Heavenward is a book well worth reading—and worth reading more than once. It doesn’t have a page-turning plot, but the realistic description of an ordinary life brings out its central moral (living life to the glory and in the enjoyment of God) into even sharper relief. What’s more, the book is one of the better examples of first person style that I’ve come across.
Stepping Heavenward is available at Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2515
(Note: This ebook has occasional glaring lapses, skipping an entire word and sometimes completely changing or ruining the meaning of a sentence.)
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Geneva D 
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