The Falling Woman

In Farrell’s solid debut, Erin Geraghty is a married lawyer with children who is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. But she has bigger problems when her flight from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco blows up in midair over Kansas, and she falls out of the sky and plummets into a barn—and inexplicably lives. Charlie Radford, a former pilot turned investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, is part of the team investigating the crash. As the search for clues about the explosion gets underway, Charlie keeps hearing stories about the miracle of the Falling Woman who survived the crash. Erin, having escaped from the hospital she was taken to, holes up at a lover’s cabin in the woods, hiding from her family, who doesn't know she survived the crash. Charlie’s growing obsession with identifying and locating Erin puts him in conflict with the other team members, who are under considerable pressure to find out what caused the plane to explode. Charlie and Erin’s stories ultimately converge to provide an emotionally satisfying climax. Charlie and Erin are vivid characters, even as the author saddles them with stock domestic problems such as a tepid sex life. Still, Farrell’s thoughtful novel calls to mind the heights of Rafael Yglesias’s Fearless. (June)