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"  The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, by Heidi W. Durrow  This intriguing title introduces an intense tale about Rachel, a mixed-race girl, and her young neighbor, Brick, whose pre-adolescent lives intersect in the aftermath of startling and unimaginable tragedy. It&amp;#039;s a mystery and an odd love story, and Durrow&amp;#039;s brilliant writing left me rooting for the protagonists and hoping for a sequel.\u2014Valerie Wieland, Murfreesboro, TN This is a story of the sweet innocence of childhood gone terribly wrong. It deftly weaves a bit of mystery into a discussion of race and growing up underprivileged to keep the reader guessing and anxious to know more. While never the focus of the story, the truth behind a fatal family tragedy is interwoven into what could have been a typical coming-of-age story\u2014but instead ends up as a nuanced, sympathetic insider&amp;#039;s look on growing up half-black, half-white.\u2014Anne-Marie Faiola, Bellingham, WA Durrow has written a story that is quite literally breathtaking. There were times when I found myself gasping out loud, and at all times I was haunted by the events that shape Rachel&amp;#039;s existence. I was pulled along each step of the way, wanting to know more and rooting for Rachel to overcome all odds and make her own peace with where she comes from and where her life will take her. The one thing we know for sure is that Rachel is a survivor\u2014both in the sense that she is the only one who survived a horrific incident and in the sense that she becomes stronger with every step of her journey \u2014Tracey Branson, Jacksonville, FL  February, by Lisa Moore  Helen, a Newfoundland woman widowed in a horrific and historic oil-rig wreck, outwardly continues her life, raising her four children into adulthood, yet cannot truly reconcile the past and let go of her dead husband&amp;#039;s memory. Not much happens plotwise; this is a slow read\u2014but that&amp;#039;s just as well, because the writing is astonishingly poetic and heartbreakingly true. The specificity of Helen&amp;#039;s experience, captured perfectly in bits of dialog in the charming, anachronistic St John&amp;#039;s dialect, actually lend it a universality with which we can identify. This book is an inward rumination on grief, memory, and the fragmented, circular chronology of life. Highly recommended for a slow winter&amp;#039;s melancholy afternoon.\u2014Susan Michael, San Francisco The past and present meld in February&amp;#039;s absorbing side stories and minutely detailed descriptions of feelings and how numbness can manage the chaos of grief. It&amp;#039;s also the story of Helen&amp;#039;s son John and anthropology student Jane, who are thrown together by Jane&amp;#039;s pregnancy after a brief liaison. Moore really pulled me into the lives of these people.\u2014 Valerie Wieland, Murfreesboro, TN The oil rig Ocean Ranger really did sink in 1982 off the coast of Newfoundland with all 84 men aboard lost. Moore attempts to piece together the life of one widow; unfortunately, she never quite breaks through the widow&amp;#039;s hazy float through life. Though the writing is beautiful and lyrical, it serves as a veil, never letting us into the true emotional heart of the book\u2014the wrenching grief that comes with the loss of a loved one and the piercing pain that never quite goes away. Instead, the reader is left to follow the widow&amp;#039;s life through various snippets of experiences weaving back and forth through 26 years.\u2014Anne-Marie Faiola, Bellingham, WA  Dear Strangers, by Meg Mullins  Mullins follows the lives of two siblings after the fateful summer day when their father has a heart attack and dies on the kitchen floor in front of them, leading their distraught mother to return their newly adopted baby brother. Mom then marries the next-door neighbor, and the children take flight into interesting, artful, escapist lives, eventually finding the young man who should have been their brother. Forces of coincidence and destiny contrive to bring them all together again, illustrating that our lives are often connected to strangers around us in ways we never see.\u2014Maureen McHugh, New Orleans The storyline of Dear Strangers seemed promising at first: two completely different damaged people going about their quirky lives and then, through a chance meeting, being brought together. But two damaged people don&amp;#039;t make a happy whole, and though the book gamely tries to entice the reader into liking these characters, it never quite clicks. They&amp;#039;re just a little too weird, with just a little too much baggage.\u2014Anne-Marie Faiola, Bellingham, WA "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/books/reviews/a10874/elles-lettres-march-395343/>