This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

"Hiding is a way of holding ourselves until we are ready to come into the light."

On a stormy night in May, a plane took off from Dulles bound for California. The Boeing 737 carrying 123 passengers and crew inexplicably exploded and everything rained down on the Kansas prairie outside of Wichita. The NTSB mobilized its investigators who headed to the site in an attempt to figure out what happened and why. "Investigating a crash is one part archeology, one part guesswork, and one part origami." But this wasn't a story about the methods of that agency. The most startling aspect of this terrible disaster was that there was rumor of a survivor. This wasn't really a story about her, either, after all.

The narrative shifts between the viewpoints of Erin Geraghty (wife, mother, lawyer, cancer patient) and Charlie Radford (a member of the NTSB GO Team). The information about the procedures of the Pointer 795 crash investigation is very interesting. The plausibility and believability of a person defying the laws of physics to survive such an event even more so. But at the heart of this tale is the question -- what rights do people have to privacy and the choice about self-determination.

This book begs to be chosen for book club discussion and I've enjoyed reading all the other reviews. Although I likely would not have made the same choices as either of the main characters, I respect their ability to do so. The reality is that we often don't have the ability to control our own narratives, especially if the public is clamoring for explanations, reasons, or answers. I could not put this down until I finished it in a single sitting. Very thought-provoking and I think I'll remember this one for a long time.

Thank you to NetGalley and Algonquin Books for this e-book ARC to read, review, and recommend.

What a fascinating story! A plane falls apart in the middle of the sky and one woman survives the tragedy.

Erin has pancreatic cancer and is set to die. She boards a plane heading to a cancer retreat. The plane comes apart during the flight and everyone but Erin dies. Say what? Yep, she is the sole survivor. Except, no one knows she has survived the flight - not even her family. Erin has decided to just die in peace and hides out in a cabin, bent on living out her final days quietly. Only, Charlie Radford, an investigator looking into the plane crash, keeps hearing about a sole survivor. Determined to find the survivor, Charlie tracks down Erin. He wants her to come forward as the sole survivor of the crash. Erin doesn't want to. She wants to be left alone to die. Will Charlie convince her to change her mind? Or, will Erin get the peace and quiet she was looking for?

Talk about a riveting read. This books looks at our right to privacy and our right to living our lives our way. Such a great story! You can't but wonder about Erin, her family, her illness, her decisions. And then there's Charlie and his determination to figure out why Erin would choose to hide away from her family and everything that's happened. Definitely a great book that provides plenty of food for thought.

There are parallel stories in this tale. One is that of Erin, a high-powered lawyer with late stage cancer who survives a plane crash and goes into hiding. The other is the investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board. Charlie keeps hearing rumors of how there was one survivor but that’s impossible. Charlie obsesses over finding her even though he knows no one could survive. And at the end of the book the two stories collide in a big bang that shapes the rest of their lives.

While this is a work of fiction, the similar cases cited (of people falling from airplanes and surviving) were real. The circumstances all varied greatly, but they proved that the improbability of falling from such a height and surviving did not mean it would be impossible.

This was a deep emotional story. How could someone, when given a miracle second chance, walk away and choose to maintain her status as already dead? Really, this was most of the critical question for Charlie Radford, the NTSB investigator in the story. His job is to disprove, or prove, that the explosion of a flight over Kansas had an improbable survivor. The rest of his agency assumes the odds are too great and Radford is on a wild goose chase and embarrassing himself over a hoax.

Without giving too much away, once Radford finds the woman who may have been on the flight, his real dilemma begins. What legal or moral obligation does he have? Does he owe more to the mystery woman or the government and his employer? The story premise was exciting enough on its own, but the real contemplation came with Radford’s and the woman’s soul-searching.

I’d give this book 4 out of 5 stars. Unless reading about a plane crash will give too much anxiety on its own, anyone who enjoys questions of the human condition and contemporary fiction would enjoy this book.

Erin Geraghty is on a flight from Washington, DC to California to attend a retreat for cancer patients. She has grown tired of her battle with pancreatic cancer and knows that her days are limited. Back at home are her grown children and a deteriorating marriage. While en route, the plane encounters turbulence over Kansas and explodes. Erin is the only survivor.

Charlie Radford is on his first assignment with the NTSB. He is sent to Kansas to identify the victims and help determine what caused the crash. The local news announces that a woman survived the crash and Charlie sets out to confirm her existence. At the same time, Erin goes into hiding to live out the remainder of her life alone. She does not want to put her family through the chaos of finding her alive and then losing her a few months later. It is up to Charlie to locate her before she drifts into solitude.

The Falling Woman is a debut novel by Richard Farrell. This is a fast-paced thought-provoking novel. I look forward to more works from this author in the future.

A suspenseful story of what happens after a commercial airplane disintegrates in mid-flight. The two main characters Charlie (the NTSB investigator) and Erin (the unlikely sole survivor) are pretty well emotionally drawn and move the story along fairly smoothly. I did think that Erin's character kept changing throughout the novel though, so it was harder for me to connect with her story.

Thanks to NetGalley and Algonquin Books for the ARC to read and review.

Two people's lives collide in a story of aircraft disaster. Charlie Radford is a young investigator for the national board. His mentor has been doing this work for years and has investigated some of the most notorious airplane wrecks like the bombing of the aircraft in Locherbie, Scotland. He tells Charlie that the work is to ask the right questions and to never make assumptions. Only believe the evidence regardless of what others around you are saying.

Erin is a passenger on a cross country flight. Her life has been in turmoil for the past year. Her twin daughters have started college. She had an affair. Shortly afterward, she got cancer and has been undergoing treatment. Finishing that, she is in remission and decides to fly to a cancer survivor retreat to decide what she wants to do with what remains of her life.

The flight is not smooth and halfway through, over a cornfield in the middle of the country, the airplane falls apart, the wreckage stretching for miles. There aren't survivors or are there? There is a persistent rumor that one woman fell from the sky still in her seat and survived, going to the hospital but with such light injuries that she is able to leave the next morning. Is that true?

Charlie is surprised and proud to be on the team who goes to the site to investigate the wreck. He is surprised that his mentor has been overlooked and is not heading up the investigation. Instead, he is working for a man new to heading up such newsworthy investigations and who is a micromanager. He decides early on that the woman who survived is real and tasks Charlie with finding out who she is and how she survived.

Richard Farrell has written an absorbing account of how an airline investigation after an incident proceeds. It highlights the joy of finding a survivor and how such a person is thrust into the limelight and also discusses the rights of a person to remain private in the midst of a clamor for their story. Both Charlie and Erin grow as individuals and the lessons they learn are ones that will change their lives. This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.

In Richard Farrell's debut novel The Falling Woman, Erin is fighting a tough battle with pancreatic cancer. When she and her husband Doug, who has been by her side caring for her, receive the latest test results, the news is not great. She is not in remission, but she will need to continue treatment, to keep fighting.



Erin is tired, and not sure how much longer she can fight. She decides to fly to a cancer survivors retreat, something that concerns Doug. The flight that Erin is on crashes over the Kansas farmland, and it appears there are no survivors.



But Erin is thrown from the plane and lands in a barn. She is found by the owner, and taken to the hospital. Before she can be questioned by the authorities as to what happened, Erin disappears.



Charlie is an investigator for the NTSB. This accident is the first major case he is assigned to, and if he does a good job, he will move up the ranks and gain respectability. He is assigned to identify the 123 bodies, a gruesome and difficult task, but one he takes very seriously.



When rumors of a female survivor swirl, the media leaps on the story. The lead investigator assigns Charlie to track the woman, and determine whether she exists or it is a hoax. This upsets Charlie, he feels it is a waste of time, and he is in a no-win situation.



Erin hides out in a cabin in Virginia, she has decided not to tell anyone that she is alive. Her husband and daughters have already mourned once, and they will have to mourn all over again when she dies of cancer.



Charlie tracks her down and tries to convince her that she must come forward. She owes it to her family, and the families of the other six women who hold out hope that it is their loved one who is the survivor.



The scenes between Charlie and Erin are the heart of this intriguing story. Can he convince her to come forward and save his job or will Erin convince him that she is entitled to live out her final days in peace? Charlie also confides in Erin about a major step he and his wife have to decide.



We see the government bureaucracy at work as the higher-ups in the NTSB want to shift blame for anything that can go wrong with the investigation, and I found the steps the investigators took at the crash sight intriguing. I liked the character of Lucy, the investigator who put forth the idea that other people have survived plane crashes and maybe someone did here as well.



There is action and two characters thrown together who have to convince the other of what is morally right. The Falling Woman feels like a cross between The Fugitive movie and Ann Napolitano's novel Dear Edward. Readers will spend time wondering what they would do in Charlie and Erin's positions. Farrell's first novel is thought-provoking, it will be interesting to see where he goes with his next one.



Thanks to Algonquin Books for putting me on Richard Farrell's tour.

"Anything that does not bring you alive is too small for you." ~ David Whyte

Charlie Radford is a National Transportation Safety Board investigator who is assigned to his first large job - a devastating airliner crash over Kansas. He wants to do this important job correctly and is assigned as the lead of the survival factors working group.

From the beginning of the huge overall investigation there is a rumor of a survivor, a woman that supposedly fell from the exploding plane miles in the air and lived.

Charlie, along with everyone else from the NTSB, doesn't believe the story even though there are a very few recorded instances of other survivors of similar accidents from the past.

This was a difficult book for me to get interested in at the beginning. It was a bit more lyrical than I expected. I dove into the book expecting excitement and instead got more of a contemplation on the meaning of life.

But my opinion changed fairly quickly because this book is written with expertise and sensitivity. I ended up enjoying Charlie's soul searching and the story of his search for the truth. There is quite a bit in the story about the inner workings of a large disaster investigation such as this, too, and I found that interesting. I never really considered just how devastating working one of these disasters could be on the people investigating the causes plus identifying the remains.

I highly recommend this story and hope to take some of the underlying message to heart.

I received this book from Algonquin Books through Net Galley and Edelweiss in the hopes that I would read it and leave an unbiased review.

Published by Algonquin Books on June 23, 2020

The Falling Woman tells a fascinating story. Erin Geraghty knows her death from pancreatic cancer is approaching. Against her husband’s wishes, she flies across the country to attend a retreat for cancer victims. Somewhere over Kansas, the plane on which she is flying explodes. Erin should fall to her death — a quicker death than the one she has been expecting — but she miraculously survives. And then, without contacting her husband or her two daughters, she disappears, leaving them to assume that she died in the crash.

Part of the story addresses how surviving the immediate threat of death, against all odds, alters Erin’s life, in part by vanquishing her fear of death. The bulk of the story, however, follows Charlie Radford, an aviation accident investigator, who is charged with investigating whether rumors of a crash survivor are real. Charlie is understandably skeptical. He is a rational man whose life is cabined by facts. His job is to ask the right questions and to let the facts carry him to a logical conclusion. Airline passengers who survive a six-mile fall are not part of a rational, fact-driven crash investigation. But the media will not let go of the story and families will not let go of the hope that a loved one might have survived. Charlie is therefore assigned to conduct what amounts to a missing persons investigation that he views as a fruitless distraction from the work he should be doing.

There is an element of the miraculous in Erin’s survival, but people have survived such falls. The story does not suggest that Erin was the recipient of divine intervention. Rather, it posits that she simply benefitted from a freakish but plausible set of circumstances that slowed the final stage of her fall. Erin is nevertheless left to wonder at the irony of knowing that each of the other passengers would likely have had a much longer reprieve from death if they had survived in her stead.

The story gains a sense of realism from its detailed depiction of a crash investigation and from the bureaucratic infighting of the crash investigators. Like all sizable offices, some employees compete to be recognized, some are driven by flashes of insight, and some succeed by plodding through the details. Charlie does not do well with office politics. Yet he’s always wanted to work a major investigation and this is his chance. Being detailed to chase down a rumor rather than performing useful and productive work is a nightmare that, he fears, will make him the agency laughingstock.

While the plot is compelling and fast moving, characterization is the novel’s strength. Charlie’s sense of self-worth comes from his work. He grew up wanting to fly but a heart defect killed that dream. His wife should understand that he is driven to be the best crash investigator he can be (he is the same person she married), but her maternal instincts are kicking into high gear, perhaps because she craves the constant attention that a baby, unlike Charlie, will provide. Charlie repeatedly puts off talking about the baby issue, creating a rift in their relationship and providing some of the novel’s tension.

In some ways, Charlie’s relationship with his wife parallels Erin’s relationship with her husband. Erin’s husband was, she admits, a reliable provider and a fine human being, but she regards him as stiff and incapable of satisfying her need for spontaneity. Having fallen from the plane and into a new life, she turns for help to a married man who once satisfied her needs, but he thinks she is cruel for wanting to hide instead of returning to her husband and daughters.

The reader might also judge Erin for being selfish. At times, she judges herself. Yet as Erin and Charlie have long and meaningful talks about their lives — talks they never had with their spouses — they each learn something about themselves, and the reader learns that it isn’t easy to judge someone without living their lives.

The novel’s central question and dramatic focus is whether Charlie will be loyal to his agency by revealing the circumstances of Erin’s survival, or will respect Erin’s desire to be left alone so that she can live the last few months of her life in peace. There are strong arguments to be made in favor of either decision and it is a tribute to Richard Farrell that the outcome is far from clear until it arrives. In that sense, The Falling Woman succeeds as a suspense novel. In a broader sense, it succeeds as an insightful character-driven novel of substantial literary merit.

RECOMMENDED

This is an unusual and intriguing story about a woman who wants to disappear and the man who has to find her. Erin, an attorney with a husband, twin daughters, and a house in Annapolis, Maryland, is dying of pancreatic cancer. She's also been having an affair with a colleague. Charlie Radford is an NTSB investigator who loves planes but is precluded from flying due to a heart condition. He's also conflicted about having children with his wife Wendy. These two lives intersect with the plane Erin is on explodes over Kansas and Radford is sent as part of the NTSB team. One woman is said to have survived the explosion and fall to earth- coming to ground in a barn- but she's disappeared. THat's Erin and she's driven across the country with her lover to his cabin. Can Radford find her? What will she do? This has fascinating but not gory details of the crash and investigation. Radford is more sympathetic than Erin, who feels quite detached as a character. I suspect some readers will find Erin distasteful for her selfishness (what about her daughters, if not her husband?) and that's fair. It's got a number of twists (not least of which is the end). Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. I did enjoyed this very much even as I at times disagreed with what was happening.

Thanks to Algonquin and Netgalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

This book had a compelling story although at first I didn’t get into it. A young woman is dying of cancer and takes a trip to a cancer retreat. On the way she’s in a plane crash and is the sole survivor. The story is also told from the perspective of the man leading the investigation of the plane crash.

I don’t want to give too much away but this book makes you think about how much a person can control their narrative and their life.

Overall a good concept but I wish it had been told a little differently to hold my interest more.

Erin Geraghty is a woman falling in more ways than one. In Richard Farrell’s debut novel, The Falling Woman, Erin had a successful career, children she loved, and a husband she tolerated until she fell ill with pancreatic cancer and then literally fell from the sky.

If Erin is the true main character of the book—the pilot, if you will, then Charlie Radford is the co-pilot. Charlie is a NTSB investigator who has been tasked with determining if the rumor of a survivor of an aviation disaster is true, and if so, where is she. Erin and Charlie share the role of narrator. Readers are given a great deal of their backstories, and their once parallel stories eventually converge.

As Charlie hunts for the survivor, readers learn of his passion for flying, his troubled childhood and fear of being a parent, and his subsequent avoidance of his wife. He loves her, but he doesn’t think he wants children. Meanwhile, Erin catches a lift to a cabin hideaway from a former lover. If her adultery isn’t bad enough, Erin decides to put her family out of their misery and disappear. She’s only got weeks/months to live, and if she resurfaces after the crash, not only will her family have to endure her slow decline to death, but she will be hounded by officials and journalists. She will have to peace, no privacy, and no ability to live as she wants for the little time she has left.

Whether you can accept Erin’s reasoning or not, The Falling Woman is a thought-provoking novel that ponders the idea of an individual’s right to privacy and their responsibility to loved ones versus their personal desires. I truly appreciated how Erin influenced Charlie, not just in terms of his professional responsibilities, but also regarding his personal passions and his marital relationship. From the shocking and surreal first chapter to the end, The Falling Woman is an intriguing read.

Charlie Radford works for the NTSB and recently it has been quiet with very minimal accidents, until one night when a major commercial flight goes down, but it seems as though there could be one survivor who literally fell from the sky. At the same time, the reader meets Erin Geraghty who has been fighting cancer for a long time and it doesn't seem like there is an end in sight. She boards a flight for a retreat and . . .

I love when a story is told through multiple perspectives, it makes the story more dynamic. I also love when the reader knows early on how all the storylines connect, so the mystery is about the characters arc, not why they are together in a book.

Richard Farrell really wrote a great yin and yang with these two characters. With both second guessing their life decisions, but for very different reasons. Charlie wonders if he can do fatherhood and Erin wonders if she is doing what is right for her children. Charlie seems at the beginning of a career and trying to find his footing, where Erin is wanting to button things up as she sees her life ending soon. I loved the back and forth of these two and I wondered where they would end up.

There was one part of the plot that I didn't love and as I am not a spoiler, I won't be too specific about it here. I felt as though it didn't completely fit, but I understood why it had to be included for some parts of the story to work. It just felt at times a little out of place.

This was my first encounter with Richard Farrell and it looks as though he has quite the eclectic backlist, where should I go from here?

The review below was posted on my blog on June 11, 2020, at https://www.thecuecard.com/books/june-bloom/

Synopsis: It tells the story of a middle-age woman — Erin Geraghty — who plans to attend a retreat for cancer patients in California but the plane crashes en route and the NTSB investigator, Charlie Radford, is tasked in the aftermath with identifying the 123 bodies and figuring out if a lone survivor at the hospital is indeed for real. But before he can interview the woman, she checks out and no one knows where she’s gone.

My Thoughts: I enjoyed this quick read, which I’d describe as thoughtful suspense lit. It’s told in alternating chapters from the two main protagonists’ viewpoints, describing in interesting detail their backstories. Erin is the woman scheduled to take the flight who’s been through many rounds of chemo for the past year for pancreatic cancer. She’s a lawyer in the DC area with a husband and two grown kids. But under her ordeal with cancer, she’s become tired of her marriage and recalls an affair she had years ago. Charlie, meanwhile, is a former pilot who loves flying but no longer can due to a heart ailment. His wife wants him to commit to having kids and buying a house, but he’s been resisting, and when the crash happens, he becomes consumed with his job of investigating his first big crash site.

These two characters held my interest, especially Charlie who seems so earnest and wants to do right by those who lost their lives, but then is hampered by rumors of a lone survivor. Eventually Charlie and Erin’s stories intersect and the suspense builds well … as to whether Erin was on the flight and survived and whether Charlie will get to the truth of what happened and announce it at the crash hearing. The ending is a doozy that will have you turning the pages quickly to get to.

I liked the novel’s themes of fate, randomness, privacy … and the miracle of life, which it offers up with an enticing sensibility. You might not like or agree with everything these characters do … but I found it was their decision to make. My only minor critique is there’s a bit of repetition of Charlie’s work manta to follow the evidence and be objective. But I was okay with the premise — not fretting too much over whether the crash situation seems implausible … you’ll likely need to suspend some disbelief … to see other points it’s making. Such a miraculous kind of premise reminded me a bit of Stephen Kiernan’s novel “The Curiosity” about an ancient man trapped in ice who comes to life … you just go with the possibility of it and see where its wonder will take you.

I received an e-galley of this novel from the publisher Algonquin Books to review. Thanks for making it possible.

Farrell's love of aviation is evident from the first page. His writing is especially lyrical when he describes flight, a metaphor aptly used throughout this enthralling debut novel.

Charlie's and Erin's lives are about to intersect in a strange and unimaginable way. Charlie Radford is a young team member at the National Transportation Safety Board, a man whose greatest desire, to be a pilot, was thwarted by a heart condition. Attorney Erin Geraghty's life trajectory has also been curtailed by pancreatic cancer. Erin, a passenger on Pointer Flight 795, is on the plane that disappears in the vast fields of Kansas. No one believes that anyone could have survived this horrendous disaster, but there is a strong rumor that one female did, and now she has disappeared. Charlie draws the short straw when he is told to verify if there is a survivor and if she is legitimate.

Both Erin and Charlie have spent their lives doing the right thing, even at the great cost of life satisfaction. When they meet, many nuanced questions arise about the right to privacy, the right to die, what people owe their families and what they owe themselves, The issues are complicated and give this novel great depth. The final ode to finding one's wings is rich and memorable.

I picked this debut novel up on a whim—I usually embrace all books about flying; however, books strictly about plane crashes are not usually my forte. As author B.A. Shapiro states so eloquently, the author explores some deeply human choices as one of the main characters defies death while under a previous death sentence, while the other wrestles with how to live both his personal and professional lives. Farrell makes you believe that you can survive the unbelievable while weaving a story that will leave you thinking about what decisions you would make in the same situations. I think this is a good choice for book clubs.

WOW. This was such a good read that really made me think what I would do in a similar situation. I enjoyed it very much and will be recommending this one!

The Falling Woman by Richard Farrell

I snapped up an advanced reader's copy of this debut novel by Richard Farrell https://richardfarrell.net/ because I fell for the advertising blurbs that compared "The Falling Woman" to Michael Crichton's fascinating novel "Airframe," about the meticulous search for an explanation of an airline disaster. The Crichton book focused on the nitty gritty recreation of the physical

plane. The Farrell book is much more nuanced. It will lend itself to deep, possibly very personal conversations among book groups.

Charlie Radford is a young up-and-comer at the National Transportation Safety Board, a man whose greatest desire, to be a pilot, was thwarted by a medical condition discovered when he was barely out of his teens. His time in the air traded for a computer simulator, Charlie studies famous airplane accidents virtually, guilty in the knowledge that the only way his career can really take off is if he lands the opportunity to head up a major investigation of a tragedy. And then it happens.

Erin Geraghty's life trajectory has also been curtailed. The long married attorney and mother of two has been in treatment for pancreatic cancer, a debilitating and seldom curable disease that can leach you of the desire to live. Her husband Doug has the fight instinct. She has the flight. Against her family's wishes, Erin decides to take a break from infusions and illness and fly to California for a spiritual renewal retreat for those facing imminent death. Halfway across Kansas, Pointer Flight 795 disappears from the air traffic control radar screen, bodies, luggage, and metal debris littering the cornfields for miles.

For Charlie, the call to Kansas is his opportunity to make a name for himself. It's also an escape from the uncomfortable pressure that Wendy, his wife of five years, is laying on him. Though they had agreed not to have children even before their marriage, she has decidedly changed her mind. While she engages a gynecologist and begins house hunting, he finds himself ignoring her calls and texts and burying himself in paperwork.

Charlie's and Erin's lives are about to intersect in a strange and unimaginable way. The questions that arise are enormously complicated, giving Farrell's story much more depth than just a tale of a fact-based recreation of an aviation accident. Discussion questions could center on faith and the belief in miracles (or the lack thereof), on the right to die and the right to privacy, on responsibility, as in what do we owe to our loved ones and to ourselves, what truths does a government owe to the public that pays its wages, and what can or should be left unsaid.

Farrell's love of aviation is evident from the first page. His writing is especially lyrical when he describes flight, a metaphor aptly used throughout this lovely debut novel. The workings of the NTSB and the way that politics taints the board's integrity feel all too sadly true. But the book's true strength is in its realistic portrayal of relationships in all their glorious vicissitudes. "The Falling Woman" will be released in June. If you're lucky your library will be open by then and let you place a hold on it now!