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Falling to Earth
A “poignant [and] powerful” novel about a 1920s Midwestern community in the aftermath of a devastating tornado (The New Yorker).In March 1925, the worst tornado in the nation’s history will descend without warning on the small town of Marah, Illinois. By nightfall, hundreds will be homeless and hundreds more will lie in the streets, dead or grievously injured. Only one man, Paul Graves, will still have everything he started the day with—his family, his home, and his business, all miraculously intact.This “absolutely gorgeous” novel follows Paul Graves and his young family in the year after the storm as they struggle to comprehend their own fate and that of their devastated town (The New York Times). They watch helplessly as Marah tries to resurrect itself from the ruins and as their friends and neighbors begin to wonder how one family, and only one, could be exempt from terrible misfortune. As the town begins to recover, the family miscalculates the growing resentment and hostility around them with tragic results, in an “extraordinarily moving” portrayal of survivor’s guilt and the frenzy of bereavement following a disaster (Financial Times).“All the big themes are here—chance, fate, loyalty, revenge, guilt, jealousy . . . Inspired by actual events surrounding the 1925 Tri-State tornado, the worst in U.S. history, Southwood’s poignantly penetrating examination of the psychic cost of survival is breathtaking in its depth of understanding.” —Booklist (starred review)“What’s most exciting about Southwood’s debut is her prose, which is reminiscent of Willa Cather’s in its ability to condense the large, ineffable melancholy of the plains into razor-sharp images.” —The Daily Beast
262 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 1, 2013
86 people are currently reading
2319 people want to read
About the author
Kate Southwood
3 books62 followersKate Southwood received an M.A. in French Medieval Art from the University of Illinois, and an M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts. She is the author of novels Falling to Earth (a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick) and Evensong. She has written for The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, and the Huffington Post, among others. Born and raised in Chicago, she now lives in Oslo, Norway with her family.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 227 reviews
August 30, 2016
At first, this seemed like such a quiet and unassuming novel; a period piece about the tragedy of tornadoes in a small mid-western town, the one family who escapes losing their house or lives, and the ugliness of mob mentality. But, no. A family being outcast and a town dealing with unimaginable loss is only the tip of what this book exposes.
Mae Graves starts out as a regular 1920s American housewife, but the pressure of her family being ostracized for their “luck” kick-starts a downward spiral of depression that may or may not have already been there. The randomness of tragedy is played out in the literal tornado and its haphazard destruction, but how much of our mental health is inherited and unstoppable, and how much is random and would have hibernated under the surface, never to be exposed, if not for a certain event?
I had no idea who Kate Southwood was; I’d never heard of her before coming across this book (her first) on a Europa Editions list, and I had such a strong reaction to it. Maybe we’re all ticking time bombs and devastation is inevitable. Maybe happily-ever-after only exists under the most perfect and undisturbed circumstances. And what does “home” mean? Southwood herself is an expatriate, as am I, and her meditation of being connected to a place, of saying goodbye to the land where your family has been for generations just about tore my guts out. This book deserves more readership. It’s subtle, painful, uncomfortable, and extraordinarily written.
Mae Graves starts out as a regular 1920s American housewife, but the pressure of her family being ostracized for their “luck” kick-starts a downward spiral of depression that may or may not have already been there. The randomness of tragedy is played out in the literal tornado and its haphazard destruction, but how much of our mental health is inherited and unstoppable, and how much is random and would have hibernated under the surface, never to be exposed, if not for a certain event?
I had no idea who Kate Southwood was; I’d never heard of her before coming across this book (her first) on a Europa Editions list, and I had such a strong reaction to it. Maybe we’re all ticking time bombs and devastation is inevitable. Maybe happily-ever-after only exists under the most perfect and undisturbed circumstances. And what does “home” mean? Southwood herself is an expatriate, as am I, and her meditation of being connected to a place, of saying goodbye to the land where your family has been for generations just about tore my guts out. This book deserves more readership. It’s subtle, painful, uncomfortable, and extraordinarily written.
May 13, 2013
Falling to Earth is the kind of novel that makes me want to grab the very next person I see and urgently say, ”You MUST read this.” I read this rabidly with increasing awe and respect that Kate Southwood had the chops to create a debut novel with this degree of psychological insight, restrained power, and heartbreaking beauty.
The story centers on a tragedy of unimaginable proportions – a tornado hits the small Illinois town of Marah in 1925, causing devastation and grievous loss in the homes of every single resident of the town.
Except one.
That one is Paul Graves, a man of dignity and integrity, who lives with his wife Mae, his three young children and his mother, Lavinia. Incredibly, nothing in Paul’s life is touched – not his family, not his home, and not his thriving lumber business…which, in fact, is even more in demand as townsfolk order coffins for the burials of their loved ones.
As the townspeople are forced to bear up under nearly unbearable grief, their envy of Paul’s “unfair” providence reaches a fever pitch and they begin to turn on him – and against him – in droves. Paul, meanwhile, labors under extreme survivor’s guilt as Mae increasingly falls into a dark depression.
Kate Southwood writes, “A tornado is a ravenous thing, untroubled by the distinction in tearing one man apart and gently setting another down a little distance away. It is resolute and makes its unheeding progress until, bloated and replete, it dissipates. A tornado is a dead thing and cannot acknowledge blame.. If a tornado smashes your house or takes your child, it does no good to blame it…Even after you’ve yanked up another house in the place the old one stood and planted flowers in the dirt where you laid your child, your fury remains as well your desire to lay blame.”
A parable of sorts, this magnificent novel strives to answer questions that have haunted humankind since early times: how do we comprehend the forces of nature and our own fates? How do we manage the extreme hostility and envy that result from nature’s unfairness? How do we break the cycles of revenge, vengeance, retribution and reprisal? These questions transcend this book and can easily be asked of modern tragedies – Hurricane Katrina or Hurricane Sandy, for example.
The themes are universal: love and loss, family, jealousy and suspicion, guilt and survival. I will not spoil the ending but I will say this – it is masterly and seamlessly brought together all the themes of the book and literally let me gasping.
It’s only May and I know that Falling To Earth will be on my Ten Best list of 2013.
The story centers on a tragedy of unimaginable proportions – a tornado hits the small Illinois town of Marah in 1925, causing devastation and grievous loss in the homes of every single resident of the town.
Except one.
That one is Paul Graves, a man of dignity and integrity, who lives with his wife Mae, his three young children and his mother, Lavinia. Incredibly, nothing in Paul’s life is touched – not his family, not his home, and not his thriving lumber business…which, in fact, is even more in demand as townsfolk order coffins for the burials of their loved ones.
As the townspeople are forced to bear up under nearly unbearable grief, their envy of Paul’s “unfair” providence reaches a fever pitch and they begin to turn on him – and against him – in droves. Paul, meanwhile, labors under extreme survivor’s guilt as Mae increasingly falls into a dark depression.
Kate Southwood writes, “A tornado is a ravenous thing, untroubled by the distinction in tearing one man apart and gently setting another down a little distance away. It is resolute and makes its unheeding progress until, bloated and replete, it dissipates. A tornado is a dead thing and cannot acknowledge blame.. If a tornado smashes your house or takes your child, it does no good to blame it…Even after you’ve yanked up another house in the place the old one stood and planted flowers in the dirt where you laid your child, your fury remains as well your desire to lay blame.”
A parable of sorts, this magnificent novel strives to answer questions that have haunted humankind since early times: how do we comprehend the forces of nature and our own fates? How do we manage the extreme hostility and envy that result from nature’s unfairness? How do we break the cycles of revenge, vengeance, retribution and reprisal? These questions transcend this book and can easily be asked of modern tragedies – Hurricane Katrina or Hurricane Sandy, for example.
The themes are universal: love and loss, family, jealousy and suspicion, guilt and survival. I will not spoil the ending but I will say this – it is masterly and seamlessly brought together all the themes of the book and literally let me gasping.
It’s only May and I know that Falling To Earth will be on my Ten Best list of 2013.
July 1, 2013
I tacked the Earthquake Preparedness checklist to my bulletin board several years ago, vowing I’d devote a weekend to assembling the suggested survival kit. I finally admitted defeat when we moved this spring and tossed it into recycling. But I had a queasy feeling my careless act meant I’d set the Pacific Northwest’s geologic karma a-tilt.
Like many residents of the Pacific Ring of Fire, I sense we are living on borrowed time. The Big One - the devastating earthquake that is a matter of when, not if - hangs in the ether of the abstract. It solidifies into fear during the days after a Tōhoku or a Christchurch, when shifting tectonics wreak horror on neighbors who share our ocean and our peril.
It is during one of these cataclysmic events when I look across the shining steel and glass landscapes of Seattle and imagine them crumbling as the earth ripples and shreds. I imagine a city in shambles; I think of that checklist, with its recommended gallons of water, cans of food, and fuel to be stored in car and cellar. There should be enough to get through several days while the region’s utilities scramble to restart and grocery store shelves are emptied by those like me, who didn’t prepare, or worse – by looters. I think of all the horrific possibilities and resolve to get serious about that disaster checklist.
What I never considered, however, was what it would be like to be someone who escapes harm, whose home remains standing while others are ripped apart, to be someone whose livelihood is not only left intact but who would in fact benefit from the destruction. I never considered how a moment’s good fortune could unleash a nightmare.
But author Kate Southwood has. In her raw and elegiac novel, Falling to Earth, she presents a parable of survival that causes the reader to reconsider disaster and its victims.
In March 1925, the Tri-State tornado tore through Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, flattening dozens of communities and killing nearly 700 people. One of the destroyed towns was Murphysboro, in southwest Illinois. The author’s fictional Marah, IL steps in for the real Murphysboro. The images of the tornado’s destruction are made all the more gut-wrenching by Southwood’s clean, unaffected, elegant writing. She presents the gruesome scenes of homes and bodies ripped apart through the eyes of the survivors. Those who are able set themselves immediately to digging out the dead from the rubble. They bear witness to the gruesome scene of bodies torn apart by impartial winds, yet shock protects them from internalizing the horror until it is time to begin rebuilding.
The plot centers on one family: Paul and Mae Graves, their three children and Paul’s mother, Lavinia. They alone emerge from the tragedy without injury, either to their bodies or to their home. Even Paul’s business, the local lumberyard, is unscathed.
The Graves respond with gratitude and, like every other survivor in town, they focus on helping their neighbors. The women open the Graves’s kitchen and gather clothing for the homeless; corpses are laid out on the front porch; Paul and his crew saw pine boards by hand and build dozens of coffins. No one has the time or the energy to think about anything other than the moment at hand and mustering the will to get to the next.
Yet within days, over open pit fires at the camp built for survivors on the edge of Marah, at the camp’s laundry area, in the town’s trash-strewn streets, in what remains of neighbors’ front yards, the whispering begins.
Is it true what they’re saying about Paul Graves?
All true.
What’s that?
Didn’t get hit.
You mean his place? His house didn’t get hit?
That’s right.
Not just his place. The lumberyard, too. Neither one got touched.
His kids weren’t even in school that day. Home sick, all of them, and down cellar.
One man whistles in spiteful amazement. That’s luck for you.
Another man looks from face to face and says Well, that can’t be. There can’t be just one. The others look back knowingly, in gentle derision of his disbelief.
…To accept this news as true is to magnify his own anguish…
What follows is haunting exposition on grief and suffering. The random nature of the tornado’s destruction represents the random nature of tragedy, no matter the mode of delivery. Southwood’s writing is pitch perfect – the poise with which she handles her themes of human nature, chance, suffering and loss left me breathless with admiration. There are a few omniscient voice passages that feel heavy-handed, but even these give the reader a chance to step back and view the destruction - first by the tornado, later by the town’s unity against the Graves – from a detached perspective before diving back into the immediacy of the Graves’s peril.
This is a tremendous debut: insightful, imaginative and timeless.
I lived for a few years in the Midwest – in central Illinois – where each Tuesday from early spring to the first weeks of autumn the tornado warning siren would sound its practice run. It was something to be ignored. You plugged your ears if you were crossing campus at the wrong moment.
There were occasions when the siren wasn’t a test. We piled into the hallway of our building, a designated tornado-safe zone. The building’s emergency designate held the radio handset to his ear, waiting for instructions to crackle through.
Each time the tornado took a different path or failed to materialize into a storm that touched ground. But that time, as is all time, was borrowed. Borrowed from tragedies past and those yet to come.
Like many residents of the Pacific Ring of Fire, I sense we are living on borrowed time. The Big One - the devastating earthquake that is a matter of when, not if - hangs in the ether of the abstract. It solidifies into fear during the days after a Tōhoku or a Christchurch, when shifting tectonics wreak horror on neighbors who share our ocean and our peril.
It is during one of these cataclysmic events when I look across the shining steel and glass landscapes of Seattle and imagine them crumbling as the earth ripples and shreds. I imagine a city in shambles; I think of that checklist, with its recommended gallons of water, cans of food, and fuel to be stored in car and cellar. There should be enough to get through several days while the region’s utilities scramble to restart and grocery store shelves are emptied by those like me, who didn’t prepare, or worse – by looters. I think of all the horrific possibilities and resolve to get serious about that disaster checklist.
What I never considered, however, was what it would be like to be someone who escapes harm, whose home remains standing while others are ripped apart, to be someone whose livelihood is not only left intact but who would in fact benefit from the destruction. I never considered how a moment’s good fortune could unleash a nightmare.
But author Kate Southwood has. In her raw and elegiac novel, Falling to Earth, she presents a parable of survival that causes the reader to reconsider disaster and its victims.
In March 1925, the Tri-State tornado tore through Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, flattening dozens of communities and killing nearly 700 people. One of the destroyed towns was Murphysboro, in southwest Illinois. The author’s fictional Marah, IL steps in for the real Murphysboro. The images of the tornado’s destruction are made all the more gut-wrenching by Southwood’s clean, unaffected, elegant writing. She presents the gruesome scenes of homes and bodies ripped apart through the eyes of the survivors. Those who are able set themselves immediately to digging out the dead from the rubble. They bear witness to the gruesome scene of bodies torn apart by impartial winds, yet shock protects them from internalizing the horror until it is time to begin rebuilding.
The plot centers on one family: Paul and Mae Graves, their three children and Paul’s mother, Lavinia. They alone emerge from the tragedy without injury, either to their bodies or to their home. Even Paul’s business, the local lumberyard, is unscathed.
The Graves respond with gratitude and, like every other survivor in town, they focus on helping their neighbors. The women open the Graves’s kitchen and gather clothing for the homeless; corpses are laid out on the front porch; Paul and his crew saw pine boards by hand and build dozens of coffins. No one has the time or the energy to think about anything other than the moment at hand and mustering the will to get to the next.
Yet within days, over open pit fires at the camp built for survivors on the edge of Marah, at the camp’s laundry area, in the town’s trash-strewn streets, in what remains of neighbors’ front yards, the whispering begins.
Is it true what they’re saying about Paul Graves?
All true.
What’s that?
Didn’t get hit.
You mean his place? His house didn’t get hit?
That’s right.
Not just his place. The lumberyard, too. Neither one got touched.
His kids weren’t even in school that day. Home sick, all of them, and down cellar.
One man whistles in spiteful amazement. That’s luck for you.
Another man looks from face to face and says Well, that can’t be. There can’t be just one. The others look back knowingly, in gentle derision of his disbelief.
…To accept this news as true is to magnify his own anguish…
What follows is haunting exposition on grief and suffering. The random nature of the tornado’s destruction represents the random nature of tragedy, no matter the mode of delivery. Southwood’s writing is pitch perfect – the poise with which she handles her themes of human nature, chance, suffering and loss left me breathless with admiration. There are a few omniscient voice passages that feel heavy-handed, but even these give the reader a chance to step back and view the destruction - first by the tornado, later by the town’s unity against the Graves – from a detached perspective before diving back into the immediacy of the Graves’s peril.
This is a tremendous debut: insightful, imaginative and timeless.
I lived for a few years in the Midwest – in central Illinois – where each Tuesday from early spring to the first weeks of autumn the tornado warning siren would sound its practice run. It was something to be ignored. You plugged your ears if you were crossing campus at the wrong moment.
There were occasions when the siren wasn’t a test. We piled into the hallway of our building, a designated tornado-safe zone. The building’s emergency designate held the radio handset to his ear, waiting for instructions to crackle through.
Each time the tornado took a different path or failed to materialize into a storm that touched ground. But that time, as is all time, was borrowed. Borrowed from tragedies past and those yet to come.
August 9, 2016
Steinbeck meets Robinson
Go to Amazon, click on the Look Inside feature, and read the short prologue of Kate Southwood's debut novel. Only 23 lines, it is as powerful an evocation of a killer tornado as you could imagine. It has a date—March 18, 1925, the Tri-State Tornado, the worst in US history—but so far no place; it is something that could happen anywhere. However, Southwood's first chapter proper makes the generic immediate and personal. The setting is Marah, Illinois, a fictional small town presumably based on Murphysboro, where 234 people died. We are in the home of Mae Graves, where she lives with her mother-in-law Lavinia, her husband Paul, and their three young children, held back from school today because of chicken pox. They make it down to the storm cellar and survive, as miraculously does their house. Paul, who was at work in the lumber yard he owns, also survives, along with his business. But they are the only ones. As will become clear ten pages later, every other family in the town will have lost a spouse, or children still at school, or homes that they had built themselves. This is not a novel about disaster, but about survival, and how guilt and resentment can still create tragedy even for those who escaped.
Southwood's technique of alternating the bird's eye view with the personal is one of the many things that reminded me of Steinbeck; it is a technique he uses to magnificent effect in The Grapes of Wrath. Also Steinbeckian is the simple goodness of many of the people. Southwood paints a close-knit Midwestern community coming together after the storm as neighbor helps neighbor and "a door knocked upon is a door opened." Paul Graves has the most to give: working to sort through the ruins of the school, taking homeless neighbors into his house, and building hundreds of coffins without immediate cost. He is warm, conscientious, and practical. But he does not realize the resentment that can turn on him and his family as the only survivors, especially when it is his untouched lumber business that will profit from most of the rebuilding. Again like Steinbeck, Southwood's picture of characters who do bad things is all the more devastating because she has already shown us the everyday wonder of people doing good.
In one of Southwood's short chapters that step away from the Graves family, the ministers of the four Protestant churches meet to establish a schedule for the funerals. Pastor Ollery, the youngest among them, asks the question "Why?" The others give the usual answers about not being able to know the mind of God, but one of them quietly realizes that Ollery is questioning the basis of his own faith. It is a chapter than might almost have come from Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, and her spirit hovers over a great deal of the book. The Graves family also asks why, though their question becomes "Why were we spared?" That too has no easy answer, but the way the entire book inhabits a moral universe, shaken but still standing, is very much a Robinson characteristic. Lavinia Graves especially is the kind of character she might have created: an older person whose inner faith is combined with everyday practicality. She will be needed at the end, because as Paul and Mae turn in upon themselves in Part Two, the story becomes one of crippling depression without the characteristic Robinson radiance. I found these pages heavy going, a long dark tunnel of the soul. But there is reemergence of a kind at the very moving conclusion, and Southwood's simple human values are not entirely lost.
Go to Amazon, click on the Look Inside feature, and read the short prologue of Kate Southwood's debut novel. Only 23 lines, it is as powerful an evocation of a killer tornado as you could imagine. It has a date—March 18, 1925, the Tri-State Tornado, the worst in US history—but so far no place; it is something that could happen anywhere. However, Southwood's first chapter proper makes the generic immediate and personal. The setting is Marah, Illinois, a fictional small town presumably based on Murphysboro, where 234 people died. We are in the home of Mae Graves, where she lives with her mother-in-law Lavinia, her husband Paul, and their three young children, held back from school today because of chicken pox. They make it down to the storm cellar and survive, as miraculously does their house. Paul, who was at work in the lumber yard he owns, also survives, along with his business. But they are the only ones. As will become clear ten pages later, every other family in the town will have lost a spouse, or children still at school, or homes that they had built themselves. This is not a novel about disaster, but about survival, and how guilt and resentment can still create tragedy even for those who escaped.
Southwood's technique of alternating the bird's eye view with the personal is one of the many things that reminded me of Steinbeck; it is a technique he uses to magnificent effect in The Grapes of Wrath. Also Steinbeckian is the simple goodness of many of the people. Southwood paints a close-knit Midwestern community coming together after the storm as neighbor helps neighbor and "a door knocked upon is a door opened." Paul Graves has the most to give: working to sort through the ruins of the school, taking homeless neighbors into his house, and building hundreds of coffins without immediate cost. He is warm, conscientious, and practical. But he does not realize the resentment that can turn on him and his family as the only survivors, especially when it is his untouched lumber business that will profit from most of the rebuilding. Again like Steinbeck, Southwood's picture of characters who do bad things is all the more devastating because she has already shown us the everyday wonder of people doing good.
In one of Southwood's short chapters that step away from the Graves family, the ministers of the four Protestant churches meet to establish a schedule for the funerals. Pastor Ollery, the youngest among them, asks the question "Why?" The others give the usual answers about not being able to know the mind of God, but one of them quietly realizes that Ollery is questioning the basis of his own faith. It is a chapter than might almost have come from Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, and her spirit hovers over a great deal of the book. The Graves family also asks why, though their question becomes "Why were we spared?" That too has no easy answer, but the way the entire book inhabits a moral universe, shaken but still standing, is very much a Robinson characteristic. Lavinia Graves especially is the kind of character she might have created: an older person whose inner faith is combined with everyday practicality. She will be needed at the end, because as Paul and Mae turn in upon themselves in Part Two, the story becomes one of crippling depression without the characteristic Robinson radiance. I found these pages heavy going, a long dark tunnel of the soul. But there is reemergence of a kind at the very moving conclusion, and Southwood's simple human values are not entirely lost.
March 19, 2013
March is not typically the time of year for tornadoes, but in Maran, Illinois on March 18th, 1925, the deadliest tornado to ever hit the United States devastated this small town. Paul and his family, will be the only family that has not lost anything. Children who were at school that day, houses, businesses all gone in a blink of an eye. The emotion and trauma at the beginning of this novel was intense, everyone who dies, men, woman, children, animals. grief stricken survivors. This was in the days before there was Fema, insurance payments, hotels, days when neighbors depended on neighbors, those with houses and food shared what they had. Red Cross arrives with tents, supplies, trains arrive with more and yet how does one rebuild when there is no money, no material. Paul who feels guilty at his good fortune, does what he can to ease the suffering, he owns a lumber mill and so he cuts wood for caskets. A tragedy of this nature brings out the good in some people and the bad in others. Looting only one outlet, jealousy another. Directed toward Paul and his family, why did they still have everything? It is not fair. This is not a long novel, and yet in contains so much. Study of tragedies, human nature, the will to survive and the ability to lie to ourselves, sometimes not wanting to see until it is too late.
September 25, 2016
Here's a book that slowly seeps into your pores. The story moves along slowly, methodically and makes you wonder about how a tornado/hurricane/storm can change so many lives. It's a story about how the Graves family and the town of Marah, Illinois cope in the aftermath of the worst tornado in US history that took place on March 18, 1925.
It's not easy to deal with the loss of loved ones, home, job, just about everything all at once and then combine all that with one family who was totally spared. It's almost too much to comprehend. And so the author takes you to a little understood place and does it very well.
Sadly, we see similar storms all too often now. And there are those who have lost everything and those that are unaffected. And how do we all react, cope and move on. This book really brings feelings and reactions to light and makes one reflect. A super, but sad read.
Thank you Jill.
It's not easy to deal with the loss of loved ones, home, job, just about everything all at once and then combine all that with one family who was totally spared. It's almost too much to comprehend. And so the author takes you to a little understood place and does it very well.
Sadly, we see similar storms all too often now. And there are those who have lost everything and those that are unaffected. And how do we all react, cope and move on. This book really brings feelings and reactions to light and makes one reflect. A super, but sad read.
Thank you Jill.
May 20, 2013
This novel is HAUNTING ME. I can't stop thinking about it. It showed me a perspective that I'd never thought about before: survivors of huge catastrophes and what happens afterwards.
A friend of mine commented that this novel has the makings of a classic and I agree. I can envision it taught in High Schools along with "To Kill a Mockingbird" to illustrate some of the darker aspects of human nature.
I'll be looking for more from Kate Southwood!
A friend of mine commented that this novel has the makings of a classic and I agree. I can envision it taught in High Schools along with "To Kill a Mockingbird" to illustrate some of the darker aspects of human nature.
I'll be looking for more from Kate Southwood!
August 19, 2016
This fictional account of the 1925 tri-state tornado upon a small town in Illinois was beyond dark.
Not only the horrific reality of the day, that school, the visuals of the survivors, but the long term reaction.
The "over-eye" third person narrative in present tense! Especially that formation practice did not work for me. It annoyed and I found it creepy. Not at all instantaneous as the focus of "eyes" at such an event. Now I read that others think it excels? Not I. Several times in reading this, I was flummoxed by the language / prose style, as well.
Having been in two tornadoes myself with fatal injuries and horrific sights around me- this language didn't meld to the mood of my living that reality at all. Never were we dwelling in the neighborhood of poetic sonnets or did I ever hear discourse of philosophy in any measure beyond the events. Not even at the funerals or the memorials for the lost (park named after them, for instance).
Maybe because mine were 50 years later? One was Oak Lawn (1967) and the other about 8 years later when I lived in Chicago Ridge, IL. Every single person I knew who lost their house, built again within a couple of years within a mile from the original spot.
Our churches and preaching never traveled this road as fictionalized here. Thank God.
Our community also had a widespread tragedy too in 1958, even more horrendous. 95 deaths in Our Lady of the Angels fire- nearly all of those grammar school kids. Some families lost half their family within hours. Many adults lost their sanity. Survivors were never laid upon as other than "lucky". Never in such a back-biting equation.
The reality of describing the outcomes to the human bodies is realistic- that's why the three. And because of the deep characterizations for the Graves' members.
But unless 50 years have completely turned around human nature, I can't see this level of distortion to already tragic history. Not saying it could not have happened- that it would not have been possible. But that, for me, it is just not believable.
Lastly, the cover. Please! Please! Who picked that cover? Believe me, you will never, never be in that posture or position with a child pointing out such an event. Not even in the "maybe" state. For those of us who have pictures of kids flying over fences and bleeding over a trail of three separate back yards with the shed flying close behind them and trying to catch one as they pass running through our heads at any odd raindrop! Well, you truly do not want to hear, or read in print, what I think of that cover.
Not only the horrific reality of the day, that school, the visuals of the survivors, but the long term reaction.
The "over-eye" third person narrative in present tense! Especially that formation practice did not work for me. It annoyed and I found it creepy. Not at all instantaneous as the focus of "eyes" at such an event. Now I read that others think it excels? Not I. Several times in reading this, I was flummoxed by the language / prose style, as well.
Having been in two tornadoes myself with fatal injuries and horrific sights around me- this language didn't meld to the mood of my living that reality at all. Never were we dwelling in the neighborhood of poetic sonnets or did I ever hear discourse of philosophy in any measure beyond the events. Not even at the funerals or the memorials for the lost (park named after them, for instance).
Maybe because mine were 50 years later? One was Oak Lawn (1967) and the other about 8 years later when I lived in Chicago Ridge, IL. Every single person I knew who lost their house, built again within a couple of years within a mile from the original spot.
Our churches and preaching never traveled this road as fictionalized here. Thank God.
Our community also had a widespread tragedy too in 1958, even more horrendous. 95 deaths in Our Lady of the Angels fire- nearly all of those grammar school kids. Some families lost half their family within hours. Many adults lost their sanity. Survivors were never laid upon as other than "lucky". Never in such a back-biting equation.
The reality of describing the outcomes to the human bodies is realistic- that's why the three. And because of the deep characterizations for the Graves' members.
But unless 50 years have completely turned around human nature, I can't see this level of distortion to already tragic history. Not saying it could not have happened- that it would not have been possible. But that, for me, it is just not believable.
Lastly, the cover. Please! Please! Who picked that cover? Believe me, you will never, never be in that posture or position with a child pointing out such an event. Not even in the "maybe" state. For those of us who have pictures of kids flying over fences and bleeding over a trail of three separate back yards with the shed flying close behind them and trying to catch one as they pass running through our heads at any odd raindrop! Well, you truly do not want to hear, or read in print, what I think of that cover.
May 24, 2013
This beautiful and resonating book is difficult to review because of its power and poetry. I was spellbound and riveted from the beginning and the ending brought goose bumps and tears to my eyes. It is difficult to believe that this is Ms. Southwood's debut novel, so wonderfully rendered and characterized as it is.. It is published by Europa which usually has wonderful books coming off its press.
The story is about a tornado of torrential magnitude that takes the town of Marah, Illinois in its grip, leveling homes and destroying people an their lives by the hundreds. Almost everyone in Marah has lost someone they love or has found their home leveled to the ground. Only one man and his family, Paul Graves, have been spared. On the day of the tornado, his children were home from school due to chicken pox. The school has been destroyed and many of its children and teachers have been killed or seriously injured by the tornado. The Graves children, their mother Mae, and Paul's mother Lavinia all retreat to the storm cellar that Paul has built. For some reason their house and Paul's lumber business are left unscathed. Paul has held on to a utility pole outside his business during the tornado and has only slight injury to his hands. The houses across the street from the Graves' house have been razed to the ground. The tornado has miraculously passed their home and Paul's business.
The people of Marah are angry and bitter and their fury is directed at the Graves family who, alone among them all, have lost nothing. Rubble surrounds the streets, people's limbs are strewn on sidewalks, and babies have been blown out of mothers' hands. Where once Paul was well-respected as a friend and business man, the people in Marah turn against him, blaming him for his good luck. Even the clergy, reading from Isaiah, lead the town to more resentment.
When tragedy ensues, it is of a magnitude that is all-consuming and relentless. I can only say that this book is one of the best ones I have read this decade. It is THAT GOOD. I highly recommend it and wish that I could do it proper justice in a review that reflects the extraordinary writing that Ms. Southwood has laid down on these pages.
The story is about a tornado of torrential magnitude that takes the town of Marah, Illinois in its grip, leveling homes and destroying people an their lives by the hundreds. Almost everyone in Marah has lost someone they love or has found their home leveled to the ground. Only one man and his family, Paul Graves, have been spared. On the day of the tornado, his children were home from school due to chicken pox. The school has been destroyed and many of its children and teachers have been killed or seriously injured by the tornado. The Graves children, their mother Mae, and Paul's mother Lavinia all retreat to the storm cellar that Paul has built. For some reason their house and Paul's lumber business are left unscathed. Paul has held on to a utility pole outside his business during the tornado and has only slight injury to his hands. The houses across the street from the Graves' house have been razed to the ground. The tornado has miraculously passed their home and Paul's business.
The people of Marah are angry and bitter and their fury is directed at the Graves family who, alone among them all, have lost nothing. Rubble surrounds the streets, people's limbs are strewn on sidewalks, and babies have been blown out of mothers' hands. Where once Paul was well-respected as a friend and business man, the people in Marah turn against him, blaming him for his good luck. Even the clergy, reading from Isaiah, lead the town to more resentment.
When tragedy ensues, it is of a magnitude that is all-consuming and relentless. I can only say that this book is one of the best ones I have read this decade. It is THAT GOOD. I highly recommend it and wish that I could do it proper justice in a review that reflects the extraordinary writing that Ms. Southwood has laid down on these pages.
March 26, 2013
Falling to Earth is a first novel by Kate Southwood. The author based the novel on a tornado that devastated an area in 1925. The opening scenes are vivid, apocalyptic but the real story begins after the disaster, when the one family that lost nothing becomes the focus of resentment and hatred for the rest of a town that lost something, often everything, and everyone, in the catastrophe. Paul Graves, father of the familly, has his mother look up the use of scapegoat in the bible. "At least they didn't blame the goat," he thinks. "They just put all their burdens on it." We watch as the Graves family is slowly torn apart by the aftermath of the storm, the resentment of their former friends, for the sin of surviving, of being lucky in the face of others' devastation. There is seemingly nothing, given the interaction of the selves they were before the storm and the reactions of the town and their treatment of the Graves,that can stop the disintegration of the family from the relentless effects of the tornado.
The ending was a shock, though not a surprise. I read the opening pages again to relive that initial terror that in the end was cleaner than the terror brought by bitter, envious, suffering people.
I strongly recommend this book for its depiction of a natural disaster and it's effects on ordinary people.
The ending was a shock, though not a surprise. I read the opening pages again to relive that initial terror that in the end was cleaner than the terror brought by bitter, envious, suffering people.
I strongly recommend this book for its depiction of a natural disaster and it's effects on ordinary people.
April 27, 2013
I loved this book. It is subtle and involving and about the guilt of survival and the bonds of family. My only complaint is that I read the last 20 pages while having my hair colored and suffered the humiliation of weeping while sitting in a barber chair with gook on my head. If I hadn't been in a public place I would have simply sobbed out loud.
I also asterisked a paragraph, something I haven't done in years. Here is a part of it:
"She'll tell him when he stands in front of this house as a man, he'll be overcome with the certain feeling that they're all still inside, his whole family, waiting for him. It will seem more than he can bear, the feeling that every moment of his life is still taking place, and that he is nonetheless powerless to see it, forced to stand outside with no way in."
I also asterisked a paragraph, something I haven't done in years. Here is a part of it:
"She'll tell him when he stands in front of this house as a man, he'll be overcome with the certain feeling that they're all still inside, his whole family, waiting for him. It will seem more than he can bear, the feeling that every moment of his life is still taking place, and that he is nonetheless powerless to see it, forced to stand outside with no way in."
July 21, 2013
This is a raw, harrowing tale of community and trauma that really made my heart ache with the sadness and loss experienced by the central characters and surrounding community. And I am not one for heartaches, so that says something about how honestly and vividly Southwood can portray these events and emotions in her writing. This book was at times quite painful to read.
The fictional story revolves around the true events of the tri-state tornado of 1925 that devastated several small communities and caused almost 700 deaths. In one small community, Southwood's fictional town of Marah Illinois, every single family has experienced loss of life or destruction of property - save one family. As people try to come to terms with the devastation, and the senselessness of nature's gruesome violence, this untouched family comes to highlight how painfully unjust the whole thing is. Why us and not them? All the standard explanations are hollow, they bring no comfort, and only serve to create a kind of rage that has no object at which to direct itself. Pretty chilling stuff.
There are so many fascinating themes that Southwood draws out, revealing their complexity with a spare and subtle prose. Why do we expect justice from nature, and why are we so baffled when nature confounds our expectations? How is trauma experienced by communities and individuals - is it ever really shared beyond one's individual subjective experience of it? What are the bonds that hold a community together?
Throughout the book I found myself wondering how different such an experience would be today, with the tentacles of technology breaching the podular semi-isolated way communities existed not so long ago. Do we turn to our neighbours who have shared our experience, or do we connect with others who perhaps know us better though they are further away?
Southwood also hints at questions of mental health, that had me wondering if all the different types of mental illness we are aware of these days would affect how individuals and communities deal with these experiences. Does knowledge of PTSD really change how people deal with trauma these days? Does knowing that depression is in part physiological and can be passed down through generations make us approach depressive individuals in a different manner?
Anyhow, this book is a five course meal in food for thought - I highly recommend it!
The fictional story revolves around the true events of the tri-state tornado of 1925 that devastated several small communities and caused almost 700 deaths. In one small community, Southwood's fictional town of Marah Illinois, every single family has experienced loss of life or destruction of property - save one family. As people try to come to terms with the devastation, and the senselessness of nature's gruesome violence, this untouched family comes to highlight how painfully unjust the whole thing is. Why us and not them? All the standard explanations are hollow, they bring no comfort, and only serve to create a kind of rage that has no object at which to direct itself. Pretty chilling stuff.
There are so many fascinating themes that Southwood draws out, revealing their complexity with a spare and subtle prose. Why do we expect justice from nature, and why are we so baffled when nature confounds our expectations? How is trauma experienced by communities and individuals - is it ever really shared beyond one's individual subjective experience of it? What are the bonds that hold a community together?
Throughout the book I found myself wondering how different such an experience would be today, with the tentacles of technology breaching the podular semi-isolated way communities existed not so long ago. Do we turn to our neighbours who have shared our experience, or do we connect with others who perhaps know us better though they are further away?
Southwood also hints at questions of mental health, that had me wondering if all the different types of mental illness we are aware of these days would affect how individuals and communities deal with these experiences. Does knowledge of PTSD really change how people deal with trauma these days? Does knowing that depression is in part physiological and can be passed down through generations make us approach depressive individuals in a different manner?
Anyhow, this book is a five course meal in food for thought - I highly recommend it!
March 6, 2015
A rare and special book, which resonates with power, emotion and the human tragedy. Kate Southwood’s “Falling to Earth” has the dignity and moral vision of Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath.”
It's 1925— the worst tornado in U.S. history devastates a small Illinois town, tests its residents in every way, including the acceptance of one family’s survival. One family among them remains seemingly unscathed—they have lost no one, their house still stands and their lumber business remains intact—while their friends and neighbors lost everything.
In our own time of fleeting TV coverage of disasters, fires, floods, earthquakes and tornadoes such as this one that decimates the small fictional town of Marah, I have never considered what follows. Southwood stopped me and held me witness to the aftermath with her ability to look into her character’s hearts and minds.
The grateful, stalwart Graves family, Paul and Mae, their mother Lavinia, and three children generously reach out to help their neighbors, who will turn their fury and vengeance against them in a way that makes one question human nature and allows the reader to observe the darkest places of the heart.
“Before the storm, he'd been a man who never met a stranger, never seemed to doubt himself. He could run faster than anyone; there had been joy in his movements, his world was full of possibilities, and he'd stood taller than he actually was. Like a house cat, Mae had once thought privately, who discounted the rumor of tigers.”
The writing is clear, intense, and Southwood, with exquisite restraint, shows us a family struggling for their place in the town they love and among themselves.
Kate Southwood has created a book to be treasured, reread and talked about. If I were part of a book group, this would be my recommendation.
It's 1925— the worst tornado in U.S. history devastates a small Illinois town, tests its residents in every way, including the acceptance of one family’s survival. One family among them remains seemingly unscathed—they have lost no one, their house still stands and their lumber business remains intact—while their friends and neighbors lost everything.
In our own time of fleeting TV coverage of disasters, fires, floods, earthquakes and tornadoes such as this one that decimates the small fictional town of Marah, I have never considered what follows. Southwood stopped me and held me witness to the aftermath with her ability to look into her character’s hearts and minds.
The grateful, stalwart Graves family, Paul and Mae, their mother Lavinia, and three children generously reach out to help their neighbors, who will turn their fury and vengeance against them in a way that makes one question human nature and allows the reader to observe the darkest places of the heart.
“Before the storm, he'd been a man who never met a stranger, never seemed to doubt himself. He could run faster than anyone; there had been joy in his movements, his world was full of possibilities, and he'd stood taller than he actually was. Like a house cat, Mae had once thought privately, who discounted the rumor of tigers.”
The writing is clear, intense, and Southwood, with exquisite restraint, shows us a family struggling for their place in the town they love and among themselves.
Kate Southwood has created a book to be treasured, reread and talked about. If I were part of a book group, this would be my recommendation.
April 24, 2014
24 APR 2014 -- Tissues! Boxes and boxes of tissues. You will need them.
A beautifully written story of how one family's good fortune was made into a misfortune by their small-minded neighbors. This book demonstrates how quickly we turn on our fellow man and begrudge him everything because we cannot stand the idea of someone having that which we do not and, so, he too, should be made to suffer.
I recommend this one highly.
A beautifully written story of how one family's good fortune was made into a misfortune by their small-minded neighbors. This book demonstrates how quickly we turn on our fellow man and begrudge him everything because we cannot stand the idea of someone having that which we do not and, so, he too, should be made to suffer.
I recommend this one highly.
December 16, 2013
Recommended by staffer Ellen J. Read her review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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September 6, 2023
En svært sterk psykologisk roman som berører og river ut hjertet på deg. Jeg leste denne da vi selv var berørt av flom. Den er svært velskrevet og siver sakte men sikkert under huden på deg. Tenk at vi har en så dyktig forfatter her til lands. Les!
March 8, 2013
Kate Southwood’s grim, gruesome, raw, and intimate novel Falling to Earth is a story about conflict: man against nature, man against man, and man against himself. Southwood’s spare and measured prose attests to the fragility of life and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit. However, there is a darker side to this story—one where fear, jealousy, and suspicion wreak havoc on a man and his family. Falling to Earth is also a timely novel in a year, make that a decade, of extreme weather phenomena.
Southwood sets her tale in Marah, Illinois, in 1925. Not only does she adequately depict life in a Midwestern small town full of proud, hardscrabble people, but she also brings a real event to vivid and terrifying life: the historic Tri-State tornado that devastated the town of Marah and then tore a destructive swath through Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. At the time, it was the deadliest tornado in American history, killing 695 people and injuring 2,027.
The tornado hit on March 18, 1925, and Falling to Earth begins moments before the tornado strikes. “The cloud is black, shot through with red and orange and purple, a vein of gold at its crest,” Southwood writes. The tornado is “a mile wide end to end.” The “people in the town scatter; some find shelter. The men and women running through the streets are mothers and fathers, desperate to reach their children at the schools. There is no time; the cloud is rolling over them.” Many scream, but the wind “screams louder” as the “school, the town hall, the shops at the rail yard fold in on themselves and the people inside.” Once “the cloud passes, the fires begin, lapping at the broken town.”
This electrifying opening sets the stage for what is to come. Southwood never lets up but takes readers on a swiftly-paced ride to a shocking conclusion, illustrating the brutal and arbitrary state of nature and, sometimes, of people.
Paul Graves, Southwood’s central character, counts himself and his family lucky. While his friends and neighbors lose loved ones, businesses, and homes, Paul survives the tornado unscathed. He and his family are not even injured, and Paul’s home and his business are undamaged. As the shaken and shattered townspeople of Marah come together to rebuild their lives and their community (without social media to aid them, I might add), they cannot help but look for someone to blame.
The citizens of Marah feel jealous of Paul. He has everything while their whole world is crumbling. They have nothing. Paul experiences overwhelming guilt over his survival, and that sensation only magnifies as his business prospers during the town’s resurgence. Soon, though, the townspeople come to resent Paul and his good fortune and grow hostile toward him and his family. The consequences are tragic.
Southwood’s themes are universal ones: love, family, loss, death, mourning, guilt, and distrust. Falling to Earth is an elegiac tale, yet pockets of hope exist in this story and in Marah, just as they do everywhere, even in times of utter destruction. Humans have mastered so much in this world of ours, yet we still have not bested nature. Mother Nature still reigns over us and perhaps always will.
Sometimes our true selves are only revealed in times of crises, and that is certainly the case in Falling to Earth. Southwood’s characters are in such pain that it moves us and twists our hearts, but in no way does their grief excuse their actions. Falling to Earth forces us to take a good look at ourselves and how we would react in a similar situation. When Southwood injects the most human of emotions—jealousy and suspicion—into her story, she makes it all the more gritty, weighty, and real.
Falling to Earth is a powerfully moving and affective debut, and that is why Barnes and Noble chose it as a Discover Great New Writers selection for spring. Certain passages describing the dead are difficult to read, but a little discomfort is well worth it, for Southwood is a bright new literary talent.
May 23, 2013
Coincidentally, I started this book the same week that Moore OK was levelled by a massive tornado. Falling to Earth is a novel built upon a real twister, the Tri-State Tornado of 1925, and set in a fictional town called Marah, Illinois which was completely flattened.
Except for one family's home and their lumber yard, that is. Paul and Mae Graves, his mother, their three young children and their properties emerge unscathed from the devastation which claims every other home and business in Marah. Once the storm is over, and in a daze, Paul and his crew start making coffins for the town's victims and then they start providing lumber for rebuilding the town's homes and businesses. Yet, emotions continue to roil. Paul feels survivors' guilt for having a home to live in while the rest of the community lives in make-shift tents. Resentment of the Graves family builds among others in the community and once school starts again, even the children are taunted by their teachers and classmates.
As I read the book, I was experiencing some cognitive dissonance. On the news, I was listening to heart-warming stories of neighbors helping each other and volunteers from all over America offering their help to the tornado victims in Norman OK. Teachers as heroes and old ladies united with their beloved pets live on TV, etc. Yet Falling to Earth, paints a much bleaker picture of a community which has experienced such random devastation.
I came away feeling that the novel's darker view of humanity rang a bit more true than the Jimmy Stewart version being broadcast from Moore OK this week. This book made me wonder what might really be going on in Moore OK, once the TV cameras stop rolling.
Now I'm going to read a happy book.
Except for one family's home and their lumber yard, that is. Paul and Mae Graves, his mother, their three young children and their properties emerge unscathed from the devastation which claims every other home and business in Marah. Once the storm is over, and in a daze, Paul and his crew start making coffins for the town's victims and then they start providing lumber for rebuilding the town's homes and businesses. Yet, emotions continue to roil. Paul feels survivors' guilt for having a home to live in while the rest of the community lives in make-shift tents. Resentment of the Graves family builds among others in the community and once school starts again, even the children are taunted by their teachers and classmates.
As I read the book, I was experiencing some cognitive dissonance. On the news, I was listening to heart-warming stories of neighbors helping each other and volunteers from all over America offering their help to the tornado victims in Norman OK. Teachers as heroes and old ladies united with their beloved pets live on TV, etc. Yet Falling to Earth, paints a much bleaker picture of a community which has experienced such random devastation.
I came away feeling that the novel's darker view of humanity rang a bit more true than the Jimmy Stewart version being broadcast from Moore OK this week. This book made me wonder what might really be going on in Moore OK, once the TV cameras stop rolling.
Now I'm going to read a happy book.
April 23, 2013
This was a very well-written small novel with sweeping ideas. A tornado devastated an area in 1925, and Kate Southwood took this historical fact and wrote a beautiful elegy about random destruction, human behavior and faith.
The Graves family is the only family in the town of Marah,Illinois, to survive this horrible tornado that descended upon their town without damage to life or home. Even Paul Graves's lumberyard stays intact. The beginning of this book, which describes the impact of this unexpected act of nature, is written so vivdly and eloquently that it stays with the reader. There is great loss of life and property, described in all it's horror. Soon, the townspeople begin to resent the Graves family, who alone in this town, remain unscathed. Some of the behavior harkens back to the novel Lord of the Flies in that human behavior, given certain sets of circumstances, can turn quite ugly. The growing animosity and the disintegration of the family comprise the rest of this quite beautiful book.
The Graves family is the only family in the town of Marah,Illinois, to survive this horrible tornado that descended upon their town without damage to life or home. Even Paul Graves's lumberyard stays intact. The beginning of this book, which describes the impact of this unexpected act of nature, is written so vivdly and eloquently that it stays with the reader. There is great loss of life and property, described in all it's horror. Soon, the townspeople begin to resent the Graves family, who alone in this town, remain unscathed. Some of the behavior harkens back to the novel Lord of the Flies in that human behavior, given certain sets of circumstances, can turn quite ugly. The growing animosity and the disintegration of the family comprise the rest of this quite beautiful book.
Read
December 28, 2013I really can't figure out how to rate this one. I put it aside for several months after about halfway through. It was well written but it bothered me on some level I really can't identify. Perhaps it was the level of bitterness that got to me. Or perhaps it reminded me too much of the stories my dad told me about how my grandfather was treated. My grandfather was a wheat farmer in SW Oklahoma but he also owned a garage. Grandpa was smart in saving money and when hard times hit the small town they lived in, he would often give people a car who needed it to find work or give them money to feed their family. My grandfather was not a "church goer" though and the same people who took his cars and his money would say horrible things about him because he didn't do church. My father said Grandpa rarely was paid back and never asked to be. He was one of the best men I had ever met and to think people said these things about him just breaks my heart. I fail to understand the bitterness of people to others who have avoided tough times.
April 23, 2015
I came upon this modern/historical/Shakespearean tragedy by chance, and am really so glad I did. I'm also a little sad, because there are so many books out there like this: so great but completely under the radar, and there's almost no chance of knowing about and reading them all. And that's what I want--to read them ALL.
May 29, 2013
Such a sad, honest, moving story. In light of the recent tornado in Oklahoma and all the horrific
disasters we've had to face lately, a very timely book that really gets you thinking about how you would handle a devastating situation.
disasters we've had to face lately, a very timely book that really gets you thinking about how you would handle a devastating situation.
March 5, 2013
You will forget to breathe while you are reading it.
You won't be able to put it down until it's finished.
You won't want it to end.
Read it.
You won't be able to put it down until it's finished.
You won't want it to end.
Read it.
Read
February 14, 2015This rarely happens to me, but I stopped trusting the author and couldn't read beyond page 51. On reflection, this was the sentence that pushed me over the edge:
"The children [...] see what the adults cannot: that one is responsible to a beating heart, that the simple act of walking means moving forward in more than just the literal sense, and that even the act of reaching into the wreckage of a house to save a book or a tea kettle is a kind of beginning."
Um, no. Children are not wise in those ways. Especially children who've just survived a natural disaster.
I also approached the book with continued irritation at Europa Editions (the publisher) who seems to put zero emphasis on cover design. I haven't even been able to post about another Europa book yet, because I want to design some alternate covers first to accompany my review. This cover is much better, but it left me wondering if I can really trust the publisher to find good writing talent, when they are so indifferent to packaging their stories.
Wow. Unusual and visceral negativity from me.
"The children [...] see what the adults cannot: that one is responsible to a beating heart, that the simple act of walking means moving forward in more than just the literal sense, and that even the act of reaching into the wreckage of a house to save a book or a tea kettle is a kind of beginning."
Um, no. Children are not wise in those ways. Especially children who've just survived a natural disaster.
I also approached the book with continued irritation at Europa Editions (the publisher) who seems to put zero emphasis on cover design. I haven't even been able to post about another Europa book yet, because I want to design some alternate covers first to accompany my review. This cover is much better, but it left me wondering if I can really trust the publisher to find good writing talent, when they are so indifferent to packaging their stories.
Wow. Unusual and visceral negativity from me.
November 17, 2016
Pivoting off the real-life Tri-State Tornado of 1925, Kate Southwood’s debut novel is a riveting account of wealth, gossip, and ostracism. The wind's devastation is described in vivid images like “a woman is frozen, screaming under a tree at a child’s body caught high in its branches” and “trees have been snatched out of the ground like hanks of hair.” Paul Graves, owner of a successful lumberyard, miraculously survives the tornado as the rest of his small Illinois town is flattened. While the tornado scene (which comes upon us quickly in the first chapter) is breathtaking in its fury, the most fascinating part of the story is how Paul is shunned by the rest of his town for his good fortune (none of his family members are hurt and his house and store are left standing in a landscape reduced to splinters and rubble). It's a clever reversal of the Biblical story of Job. Instead of being stripped of everything by God, Paul is divinely spared––and that's the worst thing which could have happened to him. Kate Southwood's first novel is the start of a very promising career.
April 13, 2013
A 1925 tornado flattens a small town in Illinois except for the Graves family who suffer no losses to their home or lumber business, but are shocked when they are shunned by their friends in the town causing severe emotional distress to each member of the family.
Most of the book is not about the actual tornado itself, but the human behavior aspect of the town's people toward the Grave's family which sometimes becomes a bit monotonous.
Interesting read with a shocker of an ending.
November 15, 2023
This was beautifully written and the ending wrecked me. It captures your attention from the opening pages and doesn't let up. The internal dialogue in the characters heads were my favorite part. Also, their neighbors are jerks!
October 25, 2016
Ouch
4.5
4.5
October 25, 2020
This book is beautifully written and tells Ms Southwood's sad and melancholy story so very well. The book is based on the true-life happening of the Tri-State Tornado which occurred on March 18, 1925. The people in Marah, Illinois are going about their business that day and doing their regular daily tasks of a normal mid-week day. Children are in school. People are at work. Wives are at home looking after the house and the children that are not in school. Yes, the sky does look very dark, but no warnings of any kind have come by the radio or the papers. Then, all of a sudden, they see a tremendous wind and hear a huge noise with a big black cloud coming straight at them. Mae, her mother-in-law Lavinia and Mae's three children run to the storm cellar that her husband had built. Paul, Mae's husband, is at his business which is a lumber yard in downtown Marah, when he sees the big storm coming. He is outside and grabs onto a pole while the wind tries its best to whip him away. He hangs on, and although he's covered in mud and dirt, he's ok. When he looks back his business is still there too. The devastation that this storm leaves in its wake almost decimates the town. Paul Graves and his family are ok. Everyone on the family is safe and their home and business are still standing. Over 200 bodies were buried in Marah after that storm. Lots of them were children who were caught in the school when the storm hit. The book goes on to describe the process of rebuilding the town as well as the emotional and physical problems that all survivors were faced with in the aftermath. Displaced people who are mourning family members and/or the loss of their homes start to look around and wonder how one family came through unscathed. Paul and his family end up taking the blame and feeling the hate and envy of their friends and neighbours while they are trying to find some sense in what has happened to them. The book goes on to describe the toll this has on Paul's family and the terrible consequences they face. This is an unforgettable story of survivor's guilt and the long-term affects from a devastating natural disaster told in such heartbreakingly beautiful prose. I did find the book to be unbearably unrelenting in its portrayal of unendurable sorrow and suffering. I knew that going in, but I didn't realize the toll that it would have on me and on my enjoyment of the story. I do need to read something more uplifting now for sure. The book is definitely worth a read.
March 31, 2024
Borrowed this off Chris to read on vacay and he should’ve given me a warning that this was a sad one.
This book was beautiful and heavy. Every character in this book was gorgeously written and they felt whole. Grief is a heavy emotion that can cascade into many different feelings. Regret, love, hate, envy - Kate did a great job exploring every one of those feelings in this novel.
This book was beautiful and heavy. Every character in this book was gorgeously written and they felt whole. Grief is a heavy emotion that can cascade into many different feelings. Regret, love, hate, envy - Kate did a great job exploring every one of those feelings in this novel.
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