Falling to Earth
Kate Southwood, 2013
Europa Editions
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781609450915
Summary
March 18, 1925. The day begins as any other rainy, spring day in the small town of Marah, Illinois. But the town lies directly in the path of the worst tornado in US history, which will descend without warning at midday, and leave the community in ruins. By nightfall, hundreds will be homeless and hundreds more will lie in the streets, dead or grievously injured. Only one man, Paul Graves, will still have everything he started the day with--his family, his home, and his business, all miraculously intact.
Based on the historic Tri-State tornado, Falling to Earth follows Paul Graves and his young family in the year after the storm as they struggle to comprehend their own fate and that of their devastated town, as they watch Marah try to resurrect itself from the ruins, and as they miscalculate the growing resentment and hostility around them with tragic results.
Beginning with its electrifying opening pages, Falling to Earth is at once a revealing portrayal of survivor's guilt and the frenzy of bereavement following a disaster, a meditation on family, and a striking depiction of Midwestern life in the 1920's.
Falling to Earth marks the debut of a splendid new writing talent. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—M.A.,University of Illinois; M.F.A., University
of Massachusetts
• Currently—lives in Oslo, Norway
Kate Southwood received an M.A. in French Medieval Art from the University of Illinois, and an M.F.A. in Fiction from the University of Massachusetts Program for Poets and Writers. Kate has published articles and essays in the Christian Science Monitor and Huffington Post, among others. She has also written in Norwegian for the online news service ABCnyheter.no.
Born and raised in Chicago, she now lives in Oslo, Norway with her husband and their two daughters. Falling to Earth is her first novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Kate Southwood has written an absolutely gorgeous—and completely modern—first novel about the great tornado of 1925. She has plainly modeled her fictional town, Marah, on the devastated Murphysboro, Ill., where 234 people died, and she has drawn freely on period newspapers and survivors' accounts. But in an act of wonderfully independent imagination, she has concentrated the narrative of Falling to Earth on Paul and Mae Graves, the only couple in Marah whose house is untouched, whose children are safe, who lose nothing while everyone else loses everything.... Southwood's beautifully constructed novel, so psychologically acute, is a meditation on loss in every sense.
Margaux Fragoso - New York Times
What's most exciting about Southwood's debut is her prose, which is reminiscent of Willa Cather's in its ability to condense the large, ineffable melancholy of the plains into razor-sharp images.
Daily Beast
Natural disasters are capricious and cruel, leaving some to sort through rubble while others sit comfortably by. In Southwood’s fine debut, a 1925 tornado devastates the small town of Marah, Ill., touching everyone—except for one family. On the day of the storm, the Graves children are at home, sick, their house untouched as the school collapses. Their father, Paul, holds tightly to a pole at his lumber yard, the only other building to escape unscathed.... [T]he community’s feelings of awe toward the lucky family gradually turns to envy as Paul sells lumber to those rebuilding, benefiting from their misfortune. Southwood grounds abstract notions of faith, community, luck, and heritage in the conflicted thoughts of her distinct and finely realized characters.
Publishers Weekly
Her vivid descriptions of the Tri-State Tornado and the carnage left in its wake are so gripping that they will leave readers breathless...Readers looking for an emotionally true work of historical fiction will enjoy the complexity of the characters and their relationships.
BookPage
A tornado destroys a Midwestern town, and one family is left unscathed, only to find their troubles just beginning.... Despite the fact that the Graves family is humble, unassuming and the opposite of smug, it gradually becomes apparent that everyone else in town resents their good fortune.... By the time Paul finally realizes that he can't reverse the senseless scapegoating, it is too late: His family's sheer politeness and unwillingness to confront their detractors or one another will be their undoing. Unfortunately, all the conflict avoidance saps the novel of forward momentum, not to mention that essential ingredient of drama: the struggle against fate. A relentlessly bleak exposé of human failings with no redemptive glimmer in sight.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the ways in which the tornado itself might be considered a character in the novel.
2. Despite suffering from mental illness, Mae can sometimes be a forceful woman. Compare her behavior and reactions over the course of the novel. When is she strongest? When is she most debilitated? How might her life have turned out if the tornado had never happened?
3. In Greek tragedy, the hero suffers a reversal of fortune and downfall, which is caused by a tragic flaw. Although the Graves family initially experience miraculously good fortune, they then suffer an obvious and quite serious reversal of fortune in the aftermath of the storm. What are the individual flaws in Paul, Mae, and Lavinia that contribute to their reversal of fortune?
4. The chapters alternate between the town and the Graves family, particularly in the first half of the novel. What is the effect of these alternating views—the more general views of the townspeople as opposed to the tighter focus on the Graves family? What is the effect in the second half of the novel as the focus shifts entirely towards the family?
5. At the end of the novel, Mae makes a decision that changes everything for her family. Are her decision and actions necessary? Are they self-serving in some way, or are they selfless?
6. One of the major themes of the novel is loyalty. Characters are variously loyal to their families, themselves, the town, or even to ideas. What are the three main ccaracters most and least loyal to?
7. A clear moral code is at work among the townspeople in the immediate aftermath of the storm—food, shelter, and clothing being given to those who need it. When does the moral shift occur that allows the townspeople to begin punishing the Graves family? In what ways might people feel morally justified in turning on them? Why do those few who do not turn on them essentially do nothing to help?
8. The novel ends almost 80 years later with Little Homer, now an old man, visiting Marah. Why is it important for him to see his childhood home again? Why is it important for the reader to see him standing on the street corner, looking at the house?
(Questions issued by publisher.)