What if everybody read the same book? We'd talk to each other about issues that matter and we'd celebrate the power of books in creating a stronger community.

The Everybody Reads 2012 selection is The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow. This debut 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 in Portland, 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.  In the tradition of Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John and Toni Morrion’s The Bluest Eye, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky is a moving portrait of a young girl—and society’s ideas of race, class and beauty.

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky received the Barbara Kingsolver’s 2008 Bellwether Prize for Literature of Social Change. Kingsolver has said “When I first envisioned the Bellwether Prize, I imagined all the best qualities of fiction: vivid language, compelling characters, and clear moral vision. Novels just like this one, Heidi Durrow’s breathless telling of a tale we’ve never heard before. Haunting and lovely, pitch-perfect, this book could not be more timely.”

We hope you, your friends and neighbors will join us on March 6th to hear the author discuss her beautifully exquisite story about identity and survival.

For more information, please visit www.multcolib.org and www.literary-arts.org