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Authors: Martha Brockenbrough

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W
HEN THEY GIVE
out Academy Awards there are always those recipients who rush to the stage, fan their teary faces, and then bore the audience to death by thanking everyone they've ever met, including their lawyers.

Seriously, the lawyers? You paid those people $500 an hour. That's a good thank-you note. It even included your signature, unless your accountant signed it, and the only thing duller than thanking a lawyer is thanking an accountant. Thank a speechwriter next time. Please.

On the other hand are the winners who deliver polished speeches that knit the theme of the movie with a vivid philosophy of life. These actors are inevitably British, which is why you're meant to read the following in a crisp accent.

I had a dream once when I was still in my teens. In it, I died.

This is not supposed to happen in dreams, but I was most certainly dead. I knew this because my soul was sitting atop the refrigerator, something I never could have managed were I still among the living.

As I looked down on the people I loved, I felt this terrible sadness. My grief wasn't that I was dead. Rather, it was that I would no longer be able to walk and talk with the people dearest to me. Anything I'd left unsaid would stay that way forever. It wasn't my life I'd miss; it was the people who gave it beauty and meaning.

From the metaphorical fridge-top where I now do my deepest thinking, I can see quite a collection of beloveds today: family and friends and people who believed in my work and dreams as I believed in theirs. I'm eternally grateful to you, and you know who you are, and in a way, this book says what I wish were true, that we could go on knowing and loving each other for all time.

Martha Brockenbrough has interviewed celebrities (once in a private jet), founded National Grammar Day, wrote game questions for Cranium and Trivial Pursuit, worked as a strap cutter in a golf bag manufacturing company, taught high school students, and edited MSN.com – and not necessarily in that order. Martha volunteers with Readergirlz.com and lives in Seattle with her husband, their two daughters, and their two dogs.

 

www.thisisteen.com/books

Text copyright © 2012 by Martha Brockenbrough

All rights reserved. Published by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc.,
Publishers since 1920
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brockenbrough, Martha.
Devine intervention / Martha Brockenbrough. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: To graduate from heaven's soul rehabilitation program for wayward teenagers, guardian angel Jerome must keep sixteen-year-old Heidi safe, but when he accidentally lets her down, he has only twenty-four hours before her soul dissolves forever.

ISBN 978-0-545-38213-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)[1. Guardian angels — Fiction. 2. Angels — Fiction. 3. Dead—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.B7826Br 2012
[E] — dc23
2011039768

First edition, June 2012

Cover art © 2012 by Ken Choi
Cover design by Phil Falco

e-ISBN 978-0-545-53002-6

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

BOOK: Devine Intervention
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