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

After a family tragedy orphans her, Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I., moves into her grandmother's mostly black community in the 1980s, where she must swallow her grief and confront her identity as a biracial woman in a world that wants to see her as either black or white.

I really, really enjoyed this one. It's one of those books that reminds me why I love reading so much. It's beautifully written and the author does a wonderful job of drawing you into each character and their lives. It was a difficult book to put down.

Back in 2013, when the TV show Orange is the New Black first came out, I found myself at a bookstore with my mom. I wanted to buy the book the TV show was based on, and my mom asked me if that meant I planned to go to prison because obviously, mom. She is not a reader, and yet while we were browsing, The Girl Who Fell From The Sky caught her eye, and she said she would buy me TWO books, if I got this one. I doubt she remembers this, or remembers why she liked the look of it, but TWO books is better than ONE book, so I agreed.

Then it sat on my bookshelf for the next five years collecting dust. I had no clue what it was supposed to be about, though if I'd paid like, the tiniest bit of attention to the title or cover art, I probably could have figured it out. (It's about a biracial girl who survives falling nine stories from the top of her family's Chicago apartment building, and her life afterwards.) There's a big tangle of perspectives and racial identity and cultural identity and growing up into who you are even if what you start from is tragedy. It's played perfectly and the writing is lovely, gritty without being harsh, and goodhearted without veering into virtuous.

Thanks, Mom. This was really good and I'm glad I read it.