Falling to Earth

By Kate Southwood

March 18, 1925. In the small town of Marah, Illinois the day begins as any other rainy, spring day. But the town lies directly in the path of the worst tornado in US history, which will descend without warning 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.

Kate Southwood's entrancing novel 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. They watch helplessly as Marah tries to resurrect itself from the ruins and as their friends and neighbors begin to wonder, then resent, how one family, and only one, could be exempt from terrible misfortune. As the town begins to recover, the family miscalculates the growing hostility around them with tragic results. 

Beginning with its electrifying opening pages, Falling to Earth is a revealing portrayal of survivor's guilt and the frenzy of bereavement following a disaster. It is a heartfelt meditation on family and a striking depiction of Midwestern life in the 1920s. The writing is masterful. The story is unforgettable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Mar 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781609451103

Kate Southwood

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. 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.

Reviews for Falling to Earth

[dmarsh451 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a quiet masterpiece that's going to follow me around for a while, maybe for the rest of my life. It is about how a small town and then a family in a small town are destroyed by the aftermath of a deadly tornado. Note I say, the aftermath and not the storm itself. In the worst disasters it seems, there is radiation even when there isn't radiation. In this case it's big giant fuck you rays that permeate the flesh and spirit of the sole family that loses nothing and nobody in the storm. My mother was Illinois enough that I thought Chicago had an 'a' on the end of it well into elementary school. She always said small towns can be mean little places if they turn on you. And they don't let up until they get what they think you owe them. This is very well covered in this book without a single wasted word. It also captured perfectly that exotic midwestern thing where speech can become so eloquent and beautiful while hardly being used. This book is an exquisite lone tree. This book is the next summer's fireweed after a bad burn.

[romonko · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is beautifully written and tells Ms Southwood's sad and melancholy story so very well. The book is based on the true-life happening of the Tri-State Tornado which occurred on March 18, 1925. The people in Marah, Illinois are going about their business that day and doing their regular daily tasks of a noel mid-week day. Children are in school. People are at work. Wives are at home looking after the house and the children that are not in school. Yes, the sky does look very dark, but no warnings of any kind have come by the radio or the papers. Then, all of a sudden, they see a tremendous wind and hear a huge noise with a big black cloud coming straight at them. Mae, her mother-in-law Lavinia and Mae's three children run to the storm cellar that her husband had built. Paul, Mae's husband, is at his business which is a lumber yard in downtown Marah, when he sees the big storm coming. He is outside and grabs onto a pole while the wind tries its best to whip him away. He hangs on, and although he's covered in mud and dirt, he's ok. When he looks back his business is still there too. The devastation that this storm leaves in its wake almost decimates the town. Paul Graves and his family are ok. Everyone on the family is safe and their home and business are still standing. Over 200 bodies were buried in Marah after that storm. Lots of them were children who were caught in the school when the storm hit. The book goes on to describe the process of rebuilding the town as well as the emotional and physical problems that all survivors were faced with in the aftermath. Displaced people who are mourning family members and/or the loss of their homes start to look around and wonder how one family came through unscathed. Paul and his family end up taking the blame and feeling the hate and envy of their friends and neighbours while they are trying to find some sense in what has happened to them. The book goes on to describe the toll this has on Paul's family and the terrible consequences they face. This is an unforgettable story of survivor's guilt and the long-term affects from a devastating natural disaster told in such heartbreakingly beautiful prose. I did find the book to be unbearably unrelenting in its portrayal of unendurable sorrow and suffering. I knew that going in, but I didn't realize the toll that it would have on me and on my enjoyment of the story. I do need to read something more uplifting now for sure. The book is definitely worth a read.

[ebt1002 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

If I could give this beautiful novel six stars, I would do so. It's not that I think it will become a classic, but rarely has a novel so moved me. Set in a small Illinois town in 1925, this is the story of one family's experiences in the aftermath of a horrendous tornado. Paul and Mae, their three children, and Paul's mother Lavinia, are the only ones in town left unscathed by the storm. None of them was killed (or even injured!), their house is intact, and Paul's lumber business was completely unharmed. How the town and they themselves respond to this trick of fate provides the vehicle for Southwood's exquisite exploration of grief, mourning, and terrible rage in the face of death's incomprehensible capriciousness. Faith is lost or strengthened, homes and farms rebuilt or abandoned. And the impact of our need to blame, to scapegoat someone, is exposed in its raw humanity. Southwood's characters became real for me in the manner of the best fictional characters. And the landscape of the town, the sights and sounds and smells of the rural midwest, are integrated into the narrative with perfect pitch. Full disclosure: Kate Southwood was a friend of mine back in the late 1980s. We drank Irish whiskey together, discussing the state of the world deep into the evening with our group of friends. So I approached her novel with some trepidation. What if I hated it? Could I be objective? I can't fully answer the second question but I can say with deep honesty that, as I read the novel, I forgot that I knew the author. I didn't hear Kate's voice in the narrative and, though I certainly knew she was intelligent and interesting, I had no idea back then that she had something like this novel inside her, waiting to come out. I can, with a firm commitment to transparency and faith to the art of reading, recommend this novel enthusiastically and without reservation.

[saratoga99 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Crafted within a historical backdrop, this stunning debut literary novel explores a small town's mushrooming unbridled bitterness toward the one family left unscathed by a devastating unseasonable tornado. Psychologically astute and emotionally profound, this literary gem ends sadly with a tragically painful outcome.

[beamis12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

March is not typically the time of year for tornadoes, but in Maran, Illinois on March 18th, 1925, the deadliest tornado to ever hit the United States devastated this small town. Tom and his family, will be the only family that has not lost anything. Children who were at school that day, houses, businesses all gone in a blink of an eye. The emotion and trauma at the beginning of this novel was intense, everyone who dies, men, woman, children, animals. grief stricken survivors. This was in the days before there was Fema, insurance payments, hotels, days when neighbors depended on neighbors, those with houses and food shared what they had. Red Cross arrives with tents, supplies, trains arrive with more and yet how does one rebuild when there is no money, no material. Tom who feels guilty at his good fortune, does what he can to ease the suffering, he owns a lumber mill and so he cuts wood for caskets. A tragedy of this nature brings out the good in some people and the bad in others. Looting only one outlet, jealousy another. Directed toward Tom and his family, why did they still have everything? It is not fair. This is not a long novel, and yet in contains so much. Study of tragedies, human nature, the will to survive and the ability to lie to ourselves, sometimes not wanting to see until it is too late.