Penny from Heaven

Penny from Heaven is a children's novel by multiple Newbury Medal-winning American author Jennifer L. Holm. First published in 2007 by Random House's Yearling Books, the story takes place in 1953 New York City, where eleven-year-old Barbara "Penny" Falucci deals with the pressures of growing up and the peculiarities of her Italian American family. Inspired by Holm's own childhood, Penny from Heaven is both a highly personal tale a young girl's coming of age and a larger cultural commentary on how people of Italian descent were once treated in America. Both Penny from Heaven and Holm’s 2000 book, Our Only May Amelia, won Newbury Medals.

The novel opens as Penny discusses her idea of heaven, which she equates with endless supplies of butter pecan ice cream, swimming pools, and baseball games. Penny confesses that she thinks of heaven a lot, but not because she is planning to die anytime soon. Even though her given name is Barbara, her late father always called her Penny because he adored the classic Bing Crosby torch song "Pennies from Heaven."

After her father passed away, Penny, her mother Ellie, and their dog, Scarlett O'Hara, moved in with Ellie's parents, Me-Me and Pop-Pop. Her father, the eldest of six children and the only one born in Italy before his parents immigrated to America, has family members still living in Penny's neighborhood, and while she loves to spend time with them, it can be awkward. Not only are both sides of her family not speaking to one another, no one will even tell Penny how her father died. She sees Nonny, her father's mother, from time to time, but Nonny bursts into tears every time Penny mentions her father. Then there is her Uncle Dominic, who lives in his 1940 Plymouth Roadking. Penny's main source of comfort is her troublemaking cousin Frankie.



Ellie is overly protective of Penny. She won't let her go to the pool out of fear that Penny will contract polio. In fact, she doesn't let Penny do anything fun, so it comes as more than a bit of a shock when Ellie allows Penny to work in Uncle Ralphie's meat shop. Dominic works there as well, and Penny secretly wishes that Dominic would marry Ellie. Back when Ellie and Penny's dad were first dating, Dominic was the only member of the family who supported their relationship. Everyone else on the Falucci side of the family wanted Penny's father to marry an Italian girl.

Ellie dashes Penny's hopes for a marriage to Dominic after she starts dating the milkman, Mr. Mulligan. However, Penny isn't about to let Mr. Mulligan become her new father. After she witnesses him being rude at a dinner party, Penny grills him with embarrassing questions and compares him—unfavorably, of course—to her father.

One day, Penny's uncle tells her and Frankie that their grandfather Falucci once buried a huge sum of money in the backyard, but he died suddenly and never told anyone the exact location of the treasure. Penny and Frankie tear the backyard apart looking for the cash, but they never find it. They then deduce that there is a possibility the money could be in the basement, but they can't get down there until everyone has left the house. Under the guise of doing laundry, Penny and Frankie venture into the basement and look for the money, while pulling clothes through the clothes-wringer as a way to keep up appearances in case anyone should walk in. Much to the kids' surprise, Frankie locates the money.



In all the excitement, however, Penny gets her arm stuck in the wringer. The machine keeps swallowing up her arm, all the way up to the shoulder until she finally passes out from the pain.

When Penny comes to, she is in the hospital. As if in a dream, she overhears her mother and Uncle Dominic locked in a heated argument. Ellie accuses Dominic of killing Penny's father.

Penny cannot move any of her right fingers, and the doctors fear she will remain disabled for life. One night, she wakes up and hears two nurses discussing Ellie. They say that Ellie's late husband was a spy for Italy and that the American government killed him. When Penny confronts Ellie about this, Ellie only cries, so Penny's aunt tells her what really happened.



When Penny was just an infant, Uncle Dominic gave her father the gift of a new radio. Uncle Dominic didn't know that, if you weren't a natural-born American citizen, just owning this particular type of radio made people think you were a spy. Since her father emigrated from Italy and owned this radio, police arrested him on suspicion of spying. While in jail, he wrote a letter in which he compared his daughter to a lost penny he will never hold again. Shortly afterward, he fell ill and died in jail. This is the reason—not the Bing Crosby song—that everyone calls her Penny.

Though Penny wants to tell Uncle Dominic that it is not his fault, that he didn't kill her father by giving him the radio as Ellie had alleged, Dominic never visits her. She only has a lucky bean he once gave her as a reminder of her favorite uncle.

When her roommate asks to see her lucky bean, Penny accidentally knocks it off the table. As she reaches down to grab it, she realizes she can move the fingers of her right hand.