from author’s website
Richard Farrell is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. His work, including fiction, memoir, essays, interviews and book reviews, has appeared or is forthcoming in The Forge, Potomac Review, Hunger Mountain, New Plains Review, upstreet, Descant, Contrary, Newfound, Numéro Cinq, and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing at Grossmont College and at San Diego Writers, Ink. His first novel, The Falling Woman, will be published by Algonquin Books in May, 2020.
ABOUT THE FALLING WOMAN:
Erin Geraghty has reached a breaking point in her cancer treatment. She believes that she is essentially already dead to all who know her–her husband, her full-grown daughters, and the ex-lover from her office. Facing a third round of treatment, she decides to take a week off from doctors and hospitals and even her family, and to fly from her home in Washington, DC, to a retreat in California. When the plane she is on encounters extreme turbulence over Kansas and comes apart in midair, she accepts the reality of the fact that this will be her real death. But fate has other ideas, for she miraculously survives not only the explosion but also the fall from the sky.
Charlie Radford is a young National Transportation Safety Board investigator who is part of the team sent to determine what caused the crash, and also to find and identify the bodies of the fallen. When, several days into his investigation, he hears a rumor that a woman was found alive in a barn, still strapped to her airline seat, he assumes it is a hoax. As word of this “miracle” has reaches the media–as well as the men and women in Congress–young Radford is forced to assume responsibility for tracking down the source of the rumor and to find the woman, should she actually exist. Once he does he must convince her to come forward. The problem is that Erin refuses to cooperate. All she wants is to be left alone to live out what time she has left, away from the rest of the world. But when one reporter gets wind of her location, Radford must decide how to protect this “falling woman” while at the same time answering the commands of his superiors in the government agency.
Fast-paced and full of twists and surprises, The Falling Woman is a story of the irony of fate, and of which conflicting factor will prevail: the need of the government and its people to know the truth, or the right of a woman to determine how her personal story will play out.
AVAILABLE MAY 19, 2020. Pre-order here.
AUTHOR VISITS:
Author visits with Richard Farrell are coming soon via NovelNetwork.com.