The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky: A True Story
by Ken Dornstein
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Book Summary Information
Author: Ken DornsteinEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-03-28
ISBN: 0375503595
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Random House
Product features:
- Condition: New
Book Reviews of The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky: A True Story
Book Review: A heartbreaking, honest, and eloquently written tribute
Summary: 5 Stars
On the morning of December 22, 1988, Ken Dornstein glanced at a newspaper, noting the front-page story --- the crash of Pan Am Flight 103 in Lockerbie, Scotland --- with detached interest. "News is just news to those not immediately affected," he writes in THE BOY WHO FELL OUT OF THE SKY, "and my brother was not supposed to fly until later in the week." That afternoon, a phone call from Pan Am made the media headlines personal. Ken's brother, David, had left London several days earlier than planned and was on board Flight 103. There were no survivors in what was later determined to be a terrorist bombing.
A sophomore at Brown University (aspiring writer David's alma mater) at the time of his brother's death, Ken tried to move on with his life. As much as he shrouded himself in a cloak of denial, though, it was impossible to separate himself from what had happened to his revered older brother. The tragedy that took David's life began --- whether Ken was willing to admit it or not --- to define his life.
After graduating from Brown, Ken accepted a job with a small private investigation firm in Los Angeles. This career track appealed to him because of "one very attractive idea: that people might seem dead and gone, but with some perseverance, clever tricks, and simple luck they might be found alive somewhere.... If I wasn't yet ready to occupy myself with the matter of missing David, I could invest myself in a story of him gone missing."
It would be eight years before Ken was able to fully confront the matter of missing David. He then journeyed to Lockerbie, began contacting David's friends, and delved into his brother's journals and notebooks. David had written voraciously, filling notebook after notebook with his writing. A charismatic yet troubled young man, he was obsessed by the thought of achieving literary fame but unable to produce even a single finished work. In THE BOY WHO FELL OUT OF THE SKY, Ken weaves in excerpts from David's journals, some of which eerily surmise that an early death might bring the fame that eluded him in life. David's vision of his literary breakthrough was "a fictional autobiography. The idea? An unknown young writer dies in a plane crash leaving behind lots of notebooks and bits of stories, and the narrator sets out to piece it all together into a story of the unknown writer's life."
Instead it's Ken who sets out to piece together David's life, discovering who David was aside from being his older brother. In the process of delving into the past, Ken uncovers a secret that explains much of David's inner turmoil and depression. As he learns more about his brother, falls in love (with David's former girlfriend, whom he eventually marries), and attends the trial of the Libyan nationals responsible for the bombing, Ken comes to realize that his quest is as much about seeking closure as it is an effort to remember David.
THE BOY WHO FELL OUT OF THE SKY is heartbreaking, a portrait of grief and a reminder that a life touched by tragedy is forever changed. It's also a poignantly honest and eloquently written tribute to a vibrant young man whose life (and those of many others) was stolen on a December night in the skies over Scotland. Ken has achieved for David what his brother did not have the chance to do and so desperately wanted: "To be remembered."
--- Reviewed by Shannon McKenna
Summary of The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky: A True Story
In this stunning, emotionally charged memoir, Ken Dornstein interweaves the moving story of his own coming-of-age with the promise of greatness his brother never lived to fulfill. The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky is a heartbreaking but profoundly hopeful book about finding beauty in the midst of tragedy and making sense of it.David Dornstein was twenty-five years old, a handsome, charismatic young man on the verge of becoming an extraordinary writer, when he boarded Pan Am Flight 103 from London on the evening of December 21, 1988. Thirty-eight minutes after takeoff, he died, along with the 258 other passengers and crew, when a terrorist?s plastic explosive ripped the plane apart over Lockerbie, Scotland.
David?s brother, Ken, was nineteen, a college sophomore home on winter break, when the call came. All his life Ken had looked up to David, confided in him, followed where he led. David?s death left Ken with a void that both crushed and consumed him. What were his brother?s plans when he died? Was David really carrying home a draft of the great novel everyone knew was in him? Was he in love with the woman he was living with overseas? Ken Dornstein needed to learn the truth about his brother?s life and death. In this harrowing and affecting memoir, he records what he found out.
It was years before Ken could bring himself to confront the stacks of notebooks and letters David left behind, but once he began to read he was drawn deep into his brother?s world. From David?s early obsession with writing down his every thought to his misadventures on the streets of New York, from an unraveling love affair in Israel to a devastating childhood secret, piece by piece Ken assembles a complex, disturbing portrait of an artist struggling to find a voice for passions that often threatened to tear him apart. Then, by chance, Ken runs into David?s college girlfriend on a train and everything changes once again. He starts to question his motives and his memories, and finally sets off on a complicated journey to finish the book that his brother started.
As haunting as a dream, as electrifying as the day?s news, The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky is an incandescent and unforgettable account of one man?s struggle to find inspiration in his brother?s life and create a life of his own. What begins as a tragedy turns into a love story of deeply affirming power.
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