The Time It Takes to Fall: A Novel

The Time It Takes to Fall: A Novel
by Margaret Lazarus Dean

The Time It Takes to Fall: A Novel
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Book Summary Information

Author: Margaret Lazarus Dean
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-02-19
ISBN: 0743297237
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Book Reviews of The Time It Takes to Fall: A Novel

Book Review: Wonderful space age page turner.
Summary: 5 Stars

I am an avid fan of space science and I love a book that brings me right into someones experiences so this book was right up my ally. This is the story of 13 year old Dolores who grew up around Nasa at the beginning of the space shuttle program and Challenger tradgedy. Her father works for Nasa as a technition and brings her to each launch. She keeps a detailed notebook about the shuttles, the astronauts and each of the launches her father takes her to. Dolores wants to be an astronaut but doesn't tell her friends at school because she wants to be in the "cool" crowd. She sacrifices her friendship with Eric to be in the "cool" crowd and tries to reconcile her guilt throughout the rest of the book. Her mom has an affair with a Nasa official (Eric's father) so that her father can keep his job and takes Dolores with her as a decoy. She witnesses the Challenger exploding and uses her notes to try to figure out what happened. This story drew me in and I stayed up reading it.
I love first person format. Don't miss this book.

Summary of The Time It Takes to Fall: A Novel

It is the early 1980s, and America is in love with space. Growing up in the shadow of Cape Canaveral, young Dolores Gray has it particularly bad: she dreams of becoming an astronaut.

At school, Dolores finds herself caught between her desire for popularity and her secret friendship with the smartest and most unpopular boy in her class, whose father is NASA's Director of Launch Safety. At home, discord begins to grow between her parents when her father's job as a NASA technician is threatened.

Looking for escape, Dolores loses herself in her scrapbook, where she files away newspaper articles about the astronauts and the shuttles, weather reports on launch scrubs, and stories about her idol, Judith Resnik.

Then, on the morning of January 28, 1986, seventy-three seconds after liftoff, the space shuttle Challenger explodes, killing all seven astronauts on board -- including Judith Resnik. It is a moment that shakes America to its core, and nowhere is it more deeply felt than in central Florida. Dolores becomes determined to reconstruct what went wrong, both in her parent's marriage and at NASA, in the hope that she can save her father's job and keep her family together.

The Time It Takes to Fall is a coming-of-age novel that deftly weaves the story of one family's drama into the larger picture of a touchstone event in American history. It is at once an intimate look at a young girl's loss of innocence and a portrait of America's loss of innocence -- the end of an era that romanticized manned space flight and would never be the same again.

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