Book Review

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

Heidi W. Durrow

If you are an empathetic person that abhors racism, you would be moved by this novel.

Additionally, you would appreciate this author’s professional skills.

The story begins in Portland, Oregon, in the fall of 1982. The protagonist Rachel Morse and her grandmother, Doris Morse, are walking from a Portland hospital to a nearby bus stop, Sufficiently recovered from a serious head injury, Rachel has been discharged into the woman’s care. Rachel is to begin “a new life,” the old one ending figuratively in Chicago on the pavement of an alleyway courtyard, she and her mother, brother, and baby sister having fallen several apartment stories from the roof of the building.

Her father, Roger Morse. What about him? Absent, her mother and he separated, he a sergeant in the Air Force returned presumably to his base in Europe.

Her mother’s boyfriend, Doug. What about him? Absent, gone a week before the suicide event after a fierce fight with Rachel’s mother, Nella, during which one of Nella’s front teeth was knocked loose. Not to be seen thereafter except once by Nella’s former employer.

Nella Floe was Danish. She met Roger Morse at a dance in Germany. She, White, and he, Black, marry. They stay in Europe, Roger preferring to live permanently outside America’s culture of racism. They produce a sickly child, Charles. Roger is an alcoholic. Their marriage is unstable. Roger feels restricted. “Love is a bitch.” One night, furious that he had made advances toward her sister, Nella leaves Roger alone with Charles. They watch TV. He drinks, smokes, He falls asleep, awakes, finds the building on fire, cannot find the boy.

Nella and Roger reunite, resolve to make a new family. They produce three children: Robbie, Rachel, and, belatedly, baby Ariel. Again their marriage founders.

Rachel meets a white contractor, Doug, at an AA meeting. He provides her initially what she is seriously lacking, fun. She leaves Roger. She and Doug move to Chicago. Four weeks later she, Robbie, and Ariel are dead. Why?

Flawed men? Nella’s naivete about race relations in America? Her crushing realization that she cannot shield her children?

Rachel, the “new girl,” must learn how to be Black, Having lived in a Chicago apartment four weeks and months in a Chicago hospital, living now in Portland, a sixth grader, light skinned with bright blue eyes, she is enrolled in an elementary school populated mostly by black students. They resent her for appearing to be and wanting to be White.

There is a girl who wants to beat me up. She says, “You think you so cute. … I’m fixin to kick your ass.” …

I am light-skinned-ed. That’s what the other kids say. And I talk white. I think new things when they say this. There are a lot of important things I didn’t know about. I think Mor [Nella, her mother] didn’t know either. They tell me it is bad to have ashy knees. They say stay out of the rain so my hair doesn’t go back. … They have a language I don’t know but I understand. I learn that black people don’t have blue eyes. I learn that I am black. …

As Rachel matures physically, she discovers that she attracts white boys, wanting from her sex.

Rachel must adjust to her new life as an American light-skinned black girl. At the same time she must reconcile why her mother Nella committed suicide, why Nella wanted her three children to die with her, and why her father has abandoned her.

Heidi Durrow is a skilled writer.

The way she parses out the details of what I have economically provided above is impressive. She uses third person point of view narration to portray thoughts, feelings, and events experienced by Nella, Loranne (Nella’s employer), Roger, and Brick (a boy Rachel’s age who has witnessed the suicide event). She uses first person narration when she chooses to have Rachel confide her emotions and experiences. The overall result is a chronologically disconnected narrative that stimulates our curiosity and fosters our anticipation.

Excellent characterization is vital. Durrow provides it. We respect and admire Rachel’s Aunt Loretta and her boyfriend Drew. We are amused by the shallowness of Drew’s daughter Lakeisha and put off by but tolerant of the restrictiveness of Grandma Morse’s rules of how to behave and for what Rachel should aspire. We abhor Roger’s and Doug’s flaws of character yet feel some measure of sympathy while witnessing their exhibitions of remorse. Finally, we feel empathy as we learn about Brick’s childhood experiences; and we appreciate greatly his strength of character as he attempts to assist Rachel in the closing chapters of the novel.

Durrow uses simple, thoughtfully selected language that, where necessary, evokes strong emotion. Here is a graphic example.

When he [Brick] 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 sticky porridge pouring from the underside of her head. The girl was heaped on top of the boy’s body, a bloody helpless pillow. And yet there was an old mattress, doughy from rain, just ten feet across from the bird-boy’s right arm, which was folded like a wing beneath him.

Pain moved the boy’s body. His bones jutted from his wrists. His eyes were wide open. He can see me, Jaime [Brick] thought.

The boy seemed to have landed feet first on the sodden cement courtyard filled with garbage bags bursting with scent and refuse. The bones from the bottom of the boy’s leg poked through his jeans at his thigh. He lay on the ground on his back as if he had fallen from a large, comfortable nest.

Heidi Durrow’s award-winning novel released my emotions. I was reminded again of what excellent fiction tells us: that human beings are flawed, that their actions impact others, that confessed guilt is not enough to excuse egregious irresponsibility, and that strength of character (our own and that of good people who seek to help us) is essential if we are to justify gratefully our parents’ gifts of life.