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

This last Thursday at the beginning of our mini-vacation I was about a fourth of the way through this book...and I was finished by Friday night.  It is written in one of my favorite styles of fiction; each chapter is a different character and the story is pieced together as you read the perspective of the various characters.  I was an amazing book.

There are so many interesting themes in this book;  identity, loss, family, healing, survival, loyalty.  The story is centered around a young girl, Rachel, who is the daughter of a white Danish woman and black American man.  Tragedy hits her family and we follow her and several other characters as they try to survive.  The characters are well-developed and the author had me guessing until the end.  I became so invested in several of the characters and the story was so well-written that I probably should have savored the book more than I did.  

I have several friends that are also reading it and I am excited to see what they think when they are done.  I was, at first, sad to see that this was the first book that Heidi Durrow has published because I so enjoyed the book but realized that perhaps there are great books to come now that this one has had such great success.

(A fun little aside from when I was reading the acknowledgments at the end of the book...  Heidi thanked the "Jentel Artist Residency Program" for helping her find her voice.  This was exciting because this was where my brother-in-law Charlie just finished an art residency of his own!)