THE FALLING WOMAN

An ambitious debut novel about a plane crash investigation and the solitary survivor of the deadly accident.

Farrell tells two parallel stories that eventually intersect. Charlie Radford, who works for the National Transportation Safety Board, is on his first big assignment—probing the midair explosion of a passenger jet over southwestern Kansas. A would-be pilot grounded because of a heart condition, Charlie is anxious to prove himself and overcome feelings of inadequacy, engendered in part by his remote, alcoholic father. Erin Geraghty, a lawyer and mother of two, is chafing in a lackluster marriage (she’s also having an affair) and dealing with a recent diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. One day she boards a flight from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco that never reaches its destination. The author is good at building suspense around the cause of the air disaster as well as the fate of its unlikely survivor—a woman passenger who apparently tumbled through the sky and landed in a barn. He’s also good at describing the politics surrounding the investigation and the personalities of the NTSB team. A former pilot himself, he writes vividly, at times rhapsodically, about flying. Not so persuasive are his domestic scenes—for example, Charlie’s dust-ups with his wife, Wendy, who desperately wants a baby (Charlie resists); and Erin’s arguments with her lover, Adam, who presses her to reveal her identity as the “falling woman” (she demurs). Sole survivors of commercial plane crashes are not unheard of—the recent novel Dear Edward, about a young sole survivor, is based on a true story. Yet a number of plot points here strain credulity. And the musings on bravery, betrayal, the randomness of fate and the extraordinariness of the ordinary feel prosaic.

Despite a promising premise, the book tries to do too much and never quite gets off the ground.