The Girl Who Fell From the Sky
Jan 9, 2011
The Girl Who Fell From the Sky
Author: Heidi Durrow
Publisher: Algonquin
Publication Date: February 2010
ISBN: 978-1-56512-680-0
ISBN Paperback (new) : 978-1-61620-015-2
A Bellwether Prize for Fiction Winner
This book has been touted as a story of social injustice and the difficulties of being biracial in today’s world. How to fit in and how cultures perceive you.
But I felt the book, while this was part of it certainly, was telling another story. A story of a little girl enduring a horror that scars her deeply and has to then find her own way to deal with the pain and memories while flourishing in life.
Rachel has grown up with her mother, father and siblings as a comforting family unit until her mother leaves with the children to take up with another man. Unfortunately it soon becomes clear that her mother is also unstable. When Rachel is the only child to survive her mother’s instability and is sent to live with her Grandmother, she not only must learn to deal with losses and injuries, but also finds herself dealing with the fact that she is expected to pick a race to be… something she’s never had to even think about before.
The books travels back and forth between the past and the present, offering horrifying glimpses of the event that led her to live with her grandmother.
This is a story of a little girl with a huge burden on her tiny shoulders. Well worth the read.
