The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
By Heidi Durrow
About the Book:
This début 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 swallow her overwhelming grief and confronts her identity as a biracial young woman in a world that wants to see her as either black or white. Meanwhile, a mystery unfolds, revealing the terrible truth about Rachel's last morning on a Chicago rooftop. Interwoven are the voices of Jamie, a neighborhood boy who witnessed the events, and Laronne, a friend of Rachel's mother. Inspired by a true story of a mother's twisted love, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, reveals an unfathomable past and explores issues of identity at a time when many people are asking "Must race confine us and define us?" In the tradition of Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, here is a portrait of a young girl—and society's ideas of race, class, and beauty.
About The Author:
Heidi W. Durrow is a graduate of Stanford, Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, and Yale Law School. She is the recipient of a Fellowship in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Writers, and a Jentel Foundation Residency. She won top honors in the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition and the Chapter One Fiction Contest. She has received grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the American Scandinavian Foundation, the Roth Endowment, and the American Antiquarian Society. Originally from Portland, OR, Heidi has worked as a corporate litigator at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, and as a consultant to the National Football League and National Basketball Association. She is the co-host of the award-winning weekly podcast Mixed Chicks Chat; and the co-founder and co-producer of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival, an annual public event, that celebrates stories of the mixed experience. Durrow's writing has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Literary Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Callaloo, Poem/Memoir/Story, the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, Essence magazine, and Newsday. She received writer Barbara Kingsolver's 2008 Bellwether Prize for Literature of Social Change for The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, her first novel.
Winner of the 2008 Bellwether Prize for Fiction:
The Bellwether Prize, established by bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver and awarded in even-numbered years, is the only major North American prize that specifically advocates literary fiction addressing issues of social justice. The prize is awarded to a previously unpublished novel representing excellence in this genre.
Reviews for The Girl Who Fell from the Sky:
Out of the clear blue, here is a breathless telling of a tale we've never heard before. Haunting and lovely, pitch-perfect, this book could not be more timely.
A remarkable novel. It unfolds its secrets with the perfect placement of a mystery—I had trouble putting it down—while its core story about a mother's desperate act recalls the insights of a writer no less than Toni Morrison. Durrow writes fearlessly about race, memory, and family—she is a writer to watch.
—Joan Silber, author of Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories (National Book Award Finalist)
Heidi Durrow's first novel stunned me, and partially broke my heart. The deeply-divided world of her child narrator reflects that struggle between universes—race, family, art and love—that so many 'light-skinned-ed girls' face, and Rachel faces her worlds with sorrow, believable fear and finally, imagination and resolve. Ms. Durrow has created a resonant world all her own."
—Susan Straight, author of A Million Nightingales
… it would be a mistake to think of The Girl Who Fell From the Sky as an “issue” novel when it engages the heart as much as it does the mind. Rachel Morse, the young girl who comes of age in the course of the novel, is the kind of girl that everyone relates to, yet she remains unknown. Her physical beauty is as much invitation as it is a barrier….unforgettable.
—Whitney Otto, New York Times best-selling author of How to Make an American Quilt
This is one of those rare novels that reflects urban life in multicultural America, the way we live now, so cleanly and freshly, that it seems easy to forget this is a book at all. Heidi Durrow is a wonderfully gifted writer who can summon a voice, a memorable character with bold, swift strokes. The Girl Who Fell from the Sky is a gem, and it shimmers in a way that good readers will notice and appreciate.
—Jay Parini, author of Promised Land
In Heidi Durrow's story-telling,one hears echoes of the early Toni Morrison, resonances with Langston Hughes's fiction about coming-of-age and dawning racial consciousness….A stunning début for a talented novelist, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky will be read and re-read as one of the most convincing, original, and moving novels in the distinguished canon of American interracial literature
—George Hutchinson, author of In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line
Like a good mystery, this book builds to the startling revelation. One can’t help but be drawn in by these characters and by the novel’s exploration of race and identity.
—Library Journal
Taut prose, a controversial conclusion and the thoughtful reflection on racism and racial identity resonate without treading into political or even overtly specific agenda waters, as the story succeeds as both a modern coming-of-age and relevant social commentary.
—Publishers Weekly
The Girl Who Fell From the Sky is that rare thing: a post-postmodern novel with heart that weaves a circle of stories about race and self-discovery into a tense and sometimes terrifying whole.
—Ms. Magazine
For more on Ms. Durrow and her work, visit: http://www.heidiwdurrow.com
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