In Marita Golden's classic novel The Edge of Heaven, she explains the story about a middle class African American family who was torn apart after a tragic event. In the event, the mother Lena accidentally pushed her 2-year old daughter Kenya down the stairs as a result of frustration. After that, she was exiled to Farmingham prison where she served time. But the story actually begins when the mother returned home from prison. The family had no idea how to cope with the death of their loved one, and accept Lena back into their lives. The whole story is about the struggles in which the Lena had to go through in order to get back into the way things were.
             Lena is probably the most interesting characters in the story. The whole plot is set around her. Before the incident with Kenya, she was a proud mother of two daughters with a good professional job as an accountant, and was married to a painter. She was a very sweet lady, but yet very emotional. She would let a lot of things get to her and she would sometimes lose control.
             Her relationship with her children was good, but she would often become frustrated because of the fact that her husband spent more time with them than her. They were closer to their father than they were to their mother. The father stayed in the house most of the day because he was a painter, while Lena was out most of the day working as an accountant in a law firm. This really influenced their marriage. She was not happy sometimes because he would never leave the house. Also, because of the fact that she was an accountant and he was a painter showed how different the two were in personality.
             One example of how Lena's emotions took over was when she took Kenya to the park. She was about to buy some cotton candy for Kenya and when Lena turned around, the baby was gone. Lena was so nervous that she
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