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The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

by Heidi W. Durrow (Goodreads Author)

3.58 of 5 stars 3.58 · rating details · 10,219 ratings · 1,956 reviews

This debut novel tells the story of Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I. who becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy. With her strict African American grandmother as her new guardian, Rachel moves to a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring mixed attention her way. Growing up in the 1980s, she learns to swa...more

Hardcover, 264 pages

Published February 16th 2010 by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

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The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow

Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans

2010's Best African American Literature

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Feb 23, 2010 T. Greenwood rated it 4 of 5 stars

There is much to admire in this tiny little book. It is an ambitious novel tackling large issues (of race, sexuality, and family) with a certain subtle grace. I loved the use of multiple voices, and felt (for the most part) that each of these voices was authentic and resonant. Some of the language is simply lovely...and I was absolutely captivated by the chapters in which we hear Rachel as a child. I think the chapters in which Rachel is an adolescent, however, were a little less credible in ter...more

3 likes · like · see review

Apr 05, 2011 Marcy Reiz rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-i-own

Feb. 2010
I found this book during a search for Barbara Kingsolver (one of my favorite authors). It won her Bellweather Prize for Fiction in 2008....so, I can't wait to read it. My first newly published book in 2010.

April 2010
To sum up this book--Wow. I really liked how the book switched narrators (those are my favorite types of books).
I was pretty happy with the end of the book but I kind of wanted to see more happen for Rachel. This was such a great read and the chapters are short so it's also...more

4 likes · like · see review

Feb 16, 2011 Judy rated it 5 of 5 stars

I got this home at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday and read 1/2 of it my first night. I simply could not put it down until I just had to sleep. I am loving it, though it is so tragic. Can't wait to get back to it tonight.

This book was so many things, but first and for most, it was excellent. I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone. It is well written, charming, sad, lonely and real. It is about healing, family and identity. Al in all, I didn't expect such a terrific book. Thanks book club!!!

6 likes · like · see review

Jul 17, 2012 Pamela Huxtable rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: pop-fiction, awesome-members-book-club

There is a palpable ache in this book from Rachel, the biracial girl who simply wants to be seen as a whole person, rather than the sum of her white mother and black father. The outside world wants to label her, place her into a category and think no more. Rachel refuses to allow their labels to shape her.

What does shape her, mold her, and serves as a marker for her life is the family tragedy that is carefully sketched in throughout the book. Durrow very skillfully does not reveal all the detail...more

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Apr 07, 2010 ConnieK rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to ConnieK by: goodreads friend; USA Today; Bookmarks mag

It's been 3 days since I finished this book and I can't get it out of my head. The tragedy involving the main character is devastating and just when I thought I was sure that I knew what really happened, more details came out to make me question the event and the motivations behind it. Separate from the mystery of the "event", I love the way the author presented the characters and the way each of them perceived and dealt with the racial issues - some profound and some of a more every-day nature...more

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Jul 20, 2012 Eileen rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
Heidi Durrow

I read Heidi Durrow’s book, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, twice in one month. The first time took just a few sittings, breathlessly turning the pages, locked inside the story. The second time, I read more slowly, taking notes for my Book Group, and savoring the prose.

Rachel, the girl of the title, is inspired by a newspaper article and partly by the author’s own history. She’s a child of a mixed race, bicultural couple: an African-American father and...more The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
Heidi Durrow

I read Heidi Durrow’s book, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, twice in one month. The first time took just a few sittings, breathlessly turning the pages, locked inside the story. The second time, I read more slowly, taking notes for my Book Group, and savoring the prose.

Rachel, the girl of the title, is inspired by a newspaper article and partly by the author’s own history. She’s a child of a mixed race, bicultural couple: an African-American father and a blond-haired, blue-eyed Danish mother. At first, Rachel’s story seems unique- she is the lone survivor of a fall from a rooftop that claims her mother and two siblings. But as Durrow interweaves the themes of motherhood and race with this troubled child’s search for her sense of self, the universality of her story becomes clear.

Durrow examines prejudice in all its ugly manifestations as vividly as she explores the beauty in the mother-child relationship, even when the mother may be deemed by some to be “unfit” for that role. She does this with honest, unselfconscious language, and startling imagery. The recurring bird metaphor is particularly haunting.

Durrow’s depictions of the multicultural child’s various dilemmas are spot on. On losing one’s mother tongue: “What if you can only have so many words in you at once? What happens to the other words?” (Rachel, p. 58). On looking “different” and fitting in: “There are 15 black people in the class and 7 white people. And there’s me. There’s another girl who sits in the back. Her name is Carmen LaGuardia, and she has hair like mine, my same color skin, and she counts as black. I don’t understand how, but she seems to know.” (Rachel, p. 60)

Through alternating chapters, we hear the story from Rachel’s first-person viewpoint and the view of the other characters in third-person narration. The tense also shifts between present (Rachel) and past (the others). This very effectively allows the reader to see the same events from several different angles, and to gradually solve the mystery of the girl who fell from the sky. At the same time, it reveals the secrets of another mystery, that of story telling itself:

“Laronne had questions, not answers. The answers might be in Nella’s journals, but Laronne couldn’t be sure. We lie to ourselves in many ways; we write down only what we want to understand and what we want to see.” p.108

and

“I can make things not count by writing them down any way I want…I don’t know if the true story…about any story you could think of matters. If there’s no one else to tell another side – the only story that can be told is the story that becomes true.” (Rachel, page 173).

Heidi Durrow tells a story with a clarity that rings true. Highly recommended for Book Groups.(less)

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Jul 21, 2011 Amanda rated it 4 of 5 stars

It's easy to see why there's so much fuss over this novel. Much as Nella Larsen did in her exemplary novel Passing and the novel Quicksand, Heidi Durrow explores both interracial and intraracial racism in a compelling and unique way. Throughout the novel, there are several nods to Larsen (the mother named Nella, the protagonist who is half black and half Danish, the exploration of racial tensions in America when compared with the more colorblind European societies, the epigraph taken from Passin...more It's easy to see why there's so much fuss over this novel. Much as Nella Larsen did in her exemplary novel Passing and the novel Quicksand, Heidi Durrow explores both interracial and intraracial racism in a compelling and unique way. Throughout the novel, there are several nods to Larsen (the mother named Nella, the protagonist who is half black and half Danish, the exploration of racial tensions in America when compared with the more colorblind European societies, the epigraph taken from Passing). However, while it's clear that Durrow was inspired by Larsen, there's never any doubt that this novel is Durrow's own.

Set in the 1980's, the novel primarily follows the story of Rachel Morse, the only survivor of a tragic accident that claimed her mother, her brother, and her sister. Her father, who serves in the military, is too grief-stricken to take care of her and instead sends her to live with her grandmother in Portland, Oregon. Feeling abandoned and alone, Rachel creates a new identity for herself and tries to cope with her increasing alienation. Having grown up in the more racially tolerant Europe, the biracial Rachel struggles with the sudden realization that she is black--but not black enough. She's taunted for her light skin, her soft hair, and her startling light blue eyes. Her black peers think she's an "Oreo," talking and behaving as if she were white. Her grandmother tries to reshape Rachel's past, obliterating any positive memories she may have of her white mother. As Rachel grows up, she struggles to find acceptance and belonging (looking, as most teenage girls do, in all of the wrong places), confronts being seen as a beautiful object and an exotic curiosity by the men in her life, hopes for a future that may hold more than a secretarial job and a three bedroom house, and unearths the truth about what happened on the day that she and her family fell from the sky.

The novel is not for readers who like linear narrative. Instead, it's fragmented into chapters that are told from the varying perspectives of Rachel, Jamie (a boy who witnessed the tragedy and who may be the only remaining link between Rachel and her father), Nella (Rachel's Danish mother who doesn't know how to cope with living in a society that judges her children by their skin color), Roger (Rachel's father), and Laronne (Nella's employer who is left to clean up what's left of the family's belongings and to try to piece together the reasons why the family fell apart). Each character is given a distinct voice and backstory that somehow intersects with Rachel; I could easily believe them to be real people. Because the novel moves from past to present and between these points of view, there are no quick and easy answers and reading often feels like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle. However, the end result is a realistic portrayal of how tragedy can destroy a life, but that the resilient can eventually prevail. (less)

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Mar 04, 2010 Eileen Souza rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: north-america

An unusual story of hurt and how different people handle who they are and how they came to be.

It is the story of Rachel Morse, a young girl who grows up to be a young woman throughout the story. She is a child of a danish mother and african american father/military man. You learn from the beginning that there was an "accident" from which Rachel is the only survivor, and from there moves into her paternal grandmother's house where she experiences a bit of an identity crisis - where she must have...more

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Dec 24, 2011 Rena rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I began The Girl Who Fell From the Sky like most people, I think, wanting to know the story of a biracial girl with light skin and blue eyes who is the only survivor of a horrific family tragedy, the details of which are laid out with each page. I was enamored with Rachel's voice and her life after the accident, and more intrigued with what came before. Durrow's writing is superb, how it tied the details. By the novel's end,however, I somehow felt some details were left undone. Like what happens...more

8 likes · like · see review

Mar 06, 2011 Mona rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 21st-century-lit, literature, race-studies, social-justice-human-rights

It was just okay. The writing felt forced. The characters had the potential to be interesting but sometimes were too one-dimensional, or Durrow didn't emphasize the dynamics between them. I also came to this with the understanding that biracialism would be an overriding theme, and in fact, the book jacket summary promises that Rachel will "confront" her mixed identity. (Maybe I should ignore book jacket summaries - they tend to be misleading.) Although the book references biracialism several tim...more

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Feb 15, 2010 Chellebcool rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was drawn to this novel after reading the description: a girl with a white, Danish mother and an African-American father, struggles with her cultural identity in the U.S. At once, it reminded me of Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen’s Quicksand published in 1928. The story background is nearly identical. So, I was curious to see how Durrow would build on Larsen’s classic....
Find the rest of this review and other book reviews at my blog:
http://theprairielibrary.blogspot.com...

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Jul 30, 2012 Michael rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, coming-of-age, social-commentary, racism, survival, african-american, oregon, dysfunctional-family

An uplifting coming of age tale about a girl growing up biracial. Rachel is the child of a black soldier and a Danish woman who gets taken in by her father�s mother and aunt in poor section of Portland, OR, after her mother and siblings die in a mysterious disaster involving a fall from a tenement roof in Chicago. Rachel struggles hard to develop her own identity and surmount the challenges of a tough-love grandmother and poor fit with both the black and white segments of her school. The writing...more

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Apr 08, 2013 Kevin Y. rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book was incredibly vivid and I truly enjoyed the way it utilized perspective and point of view to its fullest extent. The themes that this book inhibits within include how children are pure and innocent, corrupted only by the world. Another theme that can be pulled out from this book is how race is a huge factor in determining how popular you are or what your position in society is.
Utilizing the powerful tool of perspective, the story is told by multiple characters. Although these characte...more

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Mar 16, 2013 John Beck rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed, top-shelf, fiction

http://andalittlewine.blogspot.com/2012/11/book-review-girl-who-fell-from-sky-by...

In undertaking a my little New Year's resolution to read 52 book, I expected a fair number of lousy books. And I've learned that writing about several weeks worth of mediocre or merely good one can sap some of the joy from writing. I'm sure that's why bad reviews are often funniest- what else is there really to say?

But writing a review is easy when the book is brilliant. And Heidi W. Durrow's The Girl Who Fell Fro...more http://andalittlewine.blogspot.com/2012/11/book-review-girl-who-fell-from-sky-by...

In undertaking a my little New Year's resolution to read 52 book, I expected a fair number of lousy books. And I've learned that writing about several weeks worth of mediocre or merely good one can sap some of the joy from writing. I'm sure that's why bad reviews are often funniest- what else is there really to say?

But writing a review is easy when the book is brilliant. And Heidi W. Durrow's The Girl Who Fell From the Sky is brilliant. The semi-autobiographical 2010 debut novel is about a girl of mixed race, her mother Danish and her father an African American GI, struggling to find her place in the world. Race is the most obvious theme here, closely followed by alcoholism, sexuality, and despair. In most of its handlings of these themes Girl feels like a first book- too often ham handed in tackling the issues head on.

Still, it's hardly a surprise that Barbara Kingsolver chose Girl as the winner of the 2008 PEN/Bellwether prize for a novel addressing social issues; the novels chapters rotate narrators in precisely the way of Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible.

Where Girl is transcendent is in its dialogue, and in the characters revealed through the dialogue. The three central characters for Durrow are the eponymous Girl, Rachel; a neighborhood boy who saw her fall, Jamie; and a friend of the girl's mother, Larrone.

Rachel's mother leaped from the roof of her apartment building with her children in her arms, or she was pushed off, or she was forced to jump, and only Rachel survives. Jamie almost sees them fall. Larrone comes to their apartment to try to make sense of what has happened. Between the three of them, they unravel a mystery of a mother's emotions. I don't know that there's a word to describe the brokenness of Rachel's mother- there is a nexus between madness and love, despair and faith. What I love most about Girl is how it unfolds. This is a murder mystery with the pacing of a fable.

Rachel's first several chapters are magical, poetic, filled with the grand leaps of logic that only a small child can make. They rank among the best written words I've read this year. And as Rachel grows up in a black neighborhood in Portland, we get to see her transform her language. As she learns to speak (and act) in ways meant to assimilate, she fails to assimilate precisely because the choice does not come naturally to her.(less)

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Jan 05, 2013 Jae Smith rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: other-stuff

I think I forgot a cardinal rule of finding a good book: never pick up the one that is stuffed with pages of critical acclaim... I just didn't get it. Obviously Durrow can write - somehow I keep finding books that are extremely readable but ultimately disappointing. She has ability, and here she even had bits that would've made for a good story. But it just seemed that she kept falling short. First gripe: writing 'Southern' dialogue has to be done carefully. It tends to work better if the author...more

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Nov 06, 2012 Kate Bassuener rated it 4 of 5 stars

My most recently read book “The girl who fell from the sky”, was truly a page turner especially when I found it was based on a true story. I felt an instant connection to the main character, Rachel Morse as she struggles to fit in and find her place amongst the student body at her new school.

Throughout the book Rachel struggles with her identity as a biracial child raised in Chicago, she doesn't always know where she fits in and others tease her because she's different and does not belong to any...more My most recently read book “The girl who fell from the sky”, was truly a page turner especially when I found it was based on a true story. I felt an instant connection to the main character, Rachel Morse as she struggles to fit in and find her place amongst the student body at her new school.

Throughout the book Rachel struggles with her identity as a biracial child raised in Chicago, she doesn't always know where she fits in and others tease her because she's different and does not belong to any certain racial group. After a tragic accident involving Rachel, two other siblings and her mother, she is forced to live with her grandmother, who shows Rachel all the compassion as she would one of her own children, yet none of the patience or understanding that Rachel needs.

The girl who fell from the sky does not waste her time “crying or being tender” (10), instead she stuffs it into her “little blue bottle” this blue bottle contains hurtful comments and painful memories of Mor (her mother) and her abusive past life. Rachel believes this bottle will hold back all of the physical and emotional pain she experiences. “When something starts to feel like hurt, I put it in this imaginary bottle inside of me. It’s blue glass with a cork stopper.” (10) Little does rachel know, this bottle will not hold out forever and she will soon have to face the fearful past that her mother tried to protect her from. Rachel’s mother; Nella discovers she has made a huge mistake moving with her new husband a drinker who doesn't take his task seriously as a father. In order to protect her babies she feels the only suitable option is to “go as a family.”

Experiencing racism and hate early on by her own father made Rachel believe that her identity as half black, half white was something to be shunned but as time went on she realizes that exactly what she has been avoiding makes her who she is. “ I am Nella Floe’s daughter. Thats what makes me special - me.”(237) This is the statement I believe that finally lead her to overcome her confusion and helped her realize her bigger and brighter future that she and nobody else could write.
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Oct 20, 2012 Mary Pat rated it 4 of 5 stars

I didn't feel the full impact of this book until the very end. I think that's when Rachel felt the full impact of all the events in her life and I felt it at the same time she did. Nicely done, Heidi Durrow. I actually cried at the end, which is when the book is at it's most hopeful. Not because I was sad it was over, but because that's when I really understood.

I had picked this book up at a 2nd hand book store and it cost me $1. I read it in 2 days, completely engrossed the whole time. Although...more

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Sep 23, 2012 Sherry rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: oslo-library, awc

This is the story of a girl whose mother jumped/was pushed from the top of a building, along with her three children, one of which survives.

The survivor, a girl named Rachel, is bi-racial. The story is told alternatingly by different characters and spans several years as Rachel ages. While the book had nothing terribly profound or new for me to mull over -- and my goodness, how much pressure would it be to only produce profound fiction? -- it was still a fine enough read.

Most importantly, I thin...more This is the story of a girl whose mother jumped/was pushed from the top of a building, along with her three children, one of which survives.

The survivor, a girl named Rachel, is bi-racial. The story is told alternatingly by different characters and spans several years as Rachel ages. While the book had nothing terribly profound or new for me to mull over -- and my goodness, how much pressure would it be to only produce profound fiction? -- it was still a fine enough read.

Most importantly, I think the reader should take away the emotions of self-identity as it relates to race, and subsequently culture. This realization, which I originally had during my sociology coursework (and ultimately changed my life drastically), is fleshed out here in a way that is perhaps more emotional, but ultimately more accessible to those for whom a sociology course is not the path to understanding race. :-)

Rachel often talked about realizing she is black, something she before never "knew." I think this is something that a lot of people who have never experienced being part of a statistical minority don't realize. You are constantly confronted by the fact that you are different. People tell you verbally or indirectly with their actions that you are different from them, you are different from us, you are "other." There is a division there. And even though a value isn't always placed on one side or the other, your side or our side, it is often inferred.

The context surrounding such words or actions often implies that the difference, the thing that was worth pointing out, the thing that makes you part of one group and us not part of that group, is probably better or probably worse. Of course this isn't always the case; sometimes different really is just different. Not better, not worse, just different. But when you're talking about people, appearances in particular, it is very hard not to assume that the difference being pointed out has a value.

Anyway, I'm not giving a sociology lecture. Good read.(less)

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Jun 26, 2012 Heidi Gonzalez rated it 4 of 5 stars

Switching time periods and perspectives Heidi tells the story of Rachel, the girl who literally fell from the sky with the rest of her family. Did they jump? Were they pushed?

Now Rachel is living in NY with her grandmother in an African-American community who doesn't understand her. She is black, yet she isn't she has blue eyes and light skin, because her mother is Danish and her father African-American. Before she moved she didn't realize she was black, she never thought about what she was but...more

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Mar 29, 2012 Diane Scafidi-gratman rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky deals with the protagonist, Rachel’s struggle to find her own identity being biracial after losing her mother, the only connection to her Danish heritage, to a tragic murder-suicide. Throughout the book, Rachel is shunned by both blacks and whites, blacks-for having reddish hair and blue eyes and whites-for having brown skin. For instance, her mother’s boyfriend, Doug who called her children “little jiggaboos” and the kids in school who call her “light skinned-ed”...more

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Mar 06, 2012 Doreen added it

Set in the 1980s, this book is a bi-racial girl's coming of age. Rachel Morse is the daughter of a black American father and a Danish mother. Her mother, brother and sister die in a fall off a rooftop; Rachel, the sole survivor, is sent to live with her paternal grandmother and her Aunt Loretta in racially segregated Portland, Oregon.

Having grown up in a (supposedly) more colour-blind society of European army bases, Rachel struggles with her identity in a society where colour matters a great dea...more

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Feb 28, 2012 Bonnie Brody rated it 5 of 5 stars

It amazes me that The Girl Who Fell From the Sky is Heidi W. Durrow's debut novel. It is poetic, poignant, beautiful and elegiac with the panache of a seasoned writer. Once I started it, I could not stop thinking about it. It haunted my days until I finished it. Durrow has a talent that is rare and brilliant, like the northern lights.

The novel is about Rachel, the lone survivor of a fall from an apartment building. How did she fall? What made her family go off the roof-top? Told in different voi...more It amazes me that The Girl Who Fell From the Sky is Heidi W. Durrow's debut novel. It is poetic, poignant, beautiful and elegiac with the panache of a seasoned writer. Once I started it, I could not stop thinking about it. It haunted my days until I finished it. Durrow has a talent that is rare and brilliant, like the northern lights.

The novel is about Rachel, the lone survivor of a fall from an apartment building. How did she fall? What made her family go off the roof-top? Told in different voices, the story unfolds slowly and the reader is let in on family destinies, secrets, shame, and the legacy of alcohol.

The story starts off in Chicago. It is told from the viewpoints of Rachel, a bi-racial girl who is in fifth grade when the story opens and is in high school at its end. There is Nella, Rachel's mother, who is Danish, and whose surviving diary tells her story. Roger, Rachel's father, is a black man in the military who meets Nella in Europe and who leaves Rachel with his mother after the fall. Laronne is Nella's supervisor at work who comes across Nella's diaries after her death. And then there is Brick, a young man of the Chicago tenements whose stolen copy of Petersen's Guide to Birds is his most prized possession.

As this haunting novel begins, Brick, a budding ornithologist, is watching for birds to fall in the alleyway of his building. He is hoping for an egret but usually what he sees are falling trash bags and detritus from the upper floors. This time, he sees what he thinks is a huge bird falling and he runs downstairs to see what kind of bird it is. "He was certain the silhouette of the great egret had passed his courtyard window". "When he finally reached the courtyard, he saw that his bird was not a bird at all. His bird was a boy and a girl and a mother and a child. The mother, the girl, the child. They looked like they were sleeping, eyes closed, listless. The baby was still in her mother's arms, a gray porridge pouring from the underside of her head. The girl was heaped on top of the boy's body, a bloody helpless pillow." This sight becomes imprinted on Jamie and effects the course of his entire life.

Rachel is the only survivor of the fall and, after her hospitalization, is sent to live with her grandmother in Portland With her blue eyes and `good' hair, she becomes very much aware of race. There are the white girls and there are the black girls. She fits in nowhere though she tries to make a new self after the fall. Her mother, "Mor", had done her best to shield Rachel and her siblings from race, to see themselves as unique beings, not as a color. This was much easier to do in Europe than in the United States. As Rachel navigates the racial terrain of her new world, she is stymied over and over by the subtleties and outright cruelties of race.

Rachel watches her grandmother drink her `contributions' and sees how the amount of her drinking increases daily. Rachel is very aware of the impact of alcohol on her family's lives. Nella was in recovery when she died and her diary begins each day with the number of days she has been sober. Roger, Nella's father, is an alcoholic, and it becomes clear that Rachel's grandmother has a huge problem with her `contributions'. Though Roger does not visit Rachel once she is out of the hospital, his story is told through Brick who met him in the hospital. There, Roger shared family secrets with Brick and made him promise to one day tell these to Rachel.

The story unfolds in layers, slowly and magnificently. The reader has questions answered page by page until the story of the fall, the family secrets and history, are all given to us in haunting and precious bits. This is more than a story of a bi-racial girl and her ability to adapt to a new world and the horror of her legacy. It is a story of resiliency and hope and awareness and insight. Rachel is one of the strongest and clear characters that I have come across in literature. This is a book to be treasured and re-read. It is that good.
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Feb 21, 2012 Kathy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-february-2012

Good book. Rachel is an interesting person. The mystery surrounding her "fall" is revealed in memories and flashbacks and journal entries in such a way that by the time the reader knows what really happened, the reader also has a good understanding of why it happened and what prompted the people involved to do what they did. I liked Brick, too, and his journey to tell Rachel what he knew.

The fact that biracial people are scorned by everybody, no matter which side they resemble, or act like is s...more

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Feb 19, 2012 Mickey rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was a great book. Durrow did an excellent job of creating a socially conscious suspense novel. Racism, addiction, teenage promiscuity and the AIDS epidemic were just some of the social issues that were addressed. Rachel's character gave an innocent yet mature depiction of what transitioning from a color blind existence to a color/race driven one. Rachel's grandmother was funny yet annoying, her aunt was charming and inspirational and Drew was sweet but a bit of a dreamer. The author also us...more

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Jan 23, 2012 Earl Dizon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky was a book I hadn’t planned on reading. I thought it was going to be a heavy handed novel about being bi-racial- like an after-school special with a Very Important Lesson. Fortunately, I ended up getting a copy since this was Multnomah County Library’s Everybody Reads selection for 2012. And, I couldn’t put it down. It was just that good!

While the book does deal with race, this is ultimately a story about identity- and the color of Rachel’s skin is just one factor...more

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Jan 17, 2012 Tuppermalone rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club-reads

After her mother and two siblings plunge to their deaths from a Chicago rooftop, young Rachel Morse is sent to Portland, Ore., to live with her paternal grandmother. There she suddenly discovers the difficult subject of race: “I learn that black people don’t have blue eyes. I learn that I am black. I have blue eyes.” Her father, an American serviceman posted overseas, is black. Her Danish mother, whom he met in Europe, was white. During Rachel’s early childhood on an air base in Germany and then...more After her mother and two siblings plunge to their deaths from a Chicago rooftop, young Rachel Morse is sent to Portland, Ore., to live with her paternal grandmother. There she suddenly discovers the difficult subject of race: “I learn that black people don’t have blue eyes. I learn that I am black. I have blue eyes.” Her father, an American serviceman posted overseas, is black. Her Danish mother, whom he met in Europe, was white. During Rachel’s early childhood on an air base in Germany and then during a summer in Chicago, she apparently failed to realize that the color of her eyes and the color of her skin mattered to other people. But in Oregon she understands that the question of her race will define her.

Rachel is intelligent, beautiful, athletic. She is also motherless and, for all intents and purposes, fatherless. When she asks herself, “What are you?” she means what race, and she can’t come up with any adequate reply. Her self-assessments as she tries to grapple with her feelings have a blunt declarative quality. “I am 14 and know that I am black, but I can’t make the gospel sound right from my mouth.” “I don’t want being Danish to be something that I can put on and take off.” She’s poking at raw wounds, but what readers mostly see are the cauterized edges.

Durrow moves between Rachel’s perspective and several others as she gradually reveals what happened to the girl’s mother and brothers on that Chicago rooftop. But although there’s a plot twist at the end, the novel isn’t driven by suspense. Instead, its energy comes from its vividly realized characters, from how they perceive one another. Durrow has a terrific ear for dialogue, an ability to summon a wealth of hopes and fears in a single line. “How you gonna catch a lizard with your backside loading you down?” asks Grandma as she watches Rachel’s unmarried aunt eat a pancake. “How to learn all these things that might hurt them?” Rachel’s mother writes in her painfully broken English.

Even Rachel’s confusion is registered best by her conversation with a young man called Brick, who also has light skin. “What are you? Like black, or — like me?” Rachel asks. “Oh, I’m black. Regular,” is his answer. He says “regular” as if the issue weren’t as fraught and urgent as it is for her — “like he was describing coffee without milk,” Rachel thinks. She is even more unnerved, though, when he turns the question back on her: “Do you think people would ask you that if you didn’t have your mother’s eyes?” Sometimes we see ourselves best as others see us.

Louisa Thomas is a contributing editor for Newsweek.(less)

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Dec 08, 2011 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I found this book fascinating though I'd probably label it as a book intended for teens or young adults. I read it and immediately sent it to my teen-aged granddaughter. I suppose you'd call it a coming of age story. Not that those can't be great novels.

What's good about this novel is first of all its point of view. Sections focus on different characters and the reader pieces together the plot by accretion. Early on Rachel talks about herself as a "new girl". She's the daughter of a black GI se...more I found this book fascinating though I'd probably label it as a book intended for teens or young adults. I read it and immediately sent it to my teen-aged granddaughter. I suppose you'd call it a coming of age story. Not that those can't be great novels.

What's good about this novel is first of all its point of view. Sections focus on different characters and the reader pieces together the plot by accretion. Early on Rachel talks about herself as a "new girl". She's the daughter of a black GI serving in Europe and a Danish woman she calls Mor (Danish for "mother") whom she loved and who is now gone, evidently due to some tragedy, one that left Rachel injured and in the hospital. Recovering at the beginning of the book, she is going to live with her grandmother--her father's mother--in Portland and is determined to put the past behind her and be a "new girl".

The grandmother is pretty traditional: living in a black neighborhood and going to a black church which is a huge part of her life and philosophy. She clearly hates the very idea of Rachel's mother and wants her to forget. What happened to her and to her parents only becomes clear in bits and pieces as the reader gets more into Rachel's experience as well as the experiences of others around her in the past and in the present. She's never been asked to choose which heritage she'll follow, but conventional ideas of race and class demand that she do so now.

But even though Rachel determines to embrace a new life, it's not that clear what direction she should take and how to get there. And so much is beyond her control. She has trouble at school. Her experience doesn't fit her for a US school. The white girls consider her black and the black girls think she behaves like a white girl. Rachel herself is dark skinned with startlingly blue eyes, advertising not only the fact that she's biracial but that her experience and world view don't fit her for either group.

This book won the Bellweather prize in 2010, a prize started by Barbara Kingsolver and which rewards writers who handle issues of social justice. I suppose I don't quite approve of this kind of a prize, disliking the ideal of fiction (any are really) subordinated to or used primarily as a tool for ideas. Kingsolver is a talented novelist, and if I look at her oeuvre I can see the theme of social justice, but she always made her way in the amazingly competitive world of fiction as a "serious novelist" not as an advocate for social causes.(less)

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Dec 05, 2011 Trena rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Trena by: Work Book Club

This was a creative first novel...but I never forgot I was reading a first novel. I started this book sometime in the past, I realized when I started it reading it for book club (the next day, ahem--finished on time), and it really bugged me that I couldn't remember the circumstances or if I finished it. So I had a distraction, but the book wasn't enough to quite pull me away from that distraction.

The author, a biracial child of the 80s in Portland writes about a biracial child of the 80s who lo...more

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Aug 29, 2011 Judy rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone

Shelves: 21st-century-fiction

I have read some great books this summer but this one was the most beautifully written. Rachel is the daughter of Roger, African American soldier, and Nella, a Scandinavian woman whom Roger married during his service in Germany. As the story opens, we only know that Rachel has somehow lost her family and has been taken in by Roger's mother. Grandma is a hard working woman living in a mostly Black Portland, Oregon neighborhood. She has set ideas about bringing up girl children and is fundamentall...more

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Aug 17, 2011 Dori Ostermiller rated it 4 of 5 stars

Durrow is clearly a writer to watch. I found this book uniquely told, fresh, bold and at times poignant and lyrical. It's the story of a tragedy and its aftermath told primarily by Rachel, a biracial adolescent who is the lone survivor of her mother's desperate suicidal act. The descriptions of the tragedy itself sometimes read like poetry, and are incredibly haunting--they will stay with me.. I found Rachel's quest for identity as the 'new girl' believable and richly textured, but I wasn't move...more

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About Heidi W. Durrow

Chosen by Barbara Kingsolver for the Bellwether Prize for Literature of Social Change, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky (Algonquin Books), is one of the Washington Post's Best Novels of 2010 and a Top 10 Book 2010 of The Oregonian.

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