Breaking Her Fall: A Father's Blind Rage Ignites a Powerful Literary Family Drama of Redemption - Softcover

STEPHEN GOODWIN is a professor of creative writing at George Mason University and the author of three previous books. Goodwin has also directed the literature program at the National Endowment for the Arts, and he served two terms as president of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. He lives in Washington, D.C.

"A frank, plain-spoken, passionate novel that got its grips on me. It is, in one sense, a page turner, and in another a true and good story of human frailty and imperfection survived." - Richard Ford

On an ordinary summer night, Tucker Jones picks up the phone, expecting to hear from his fourteen-year-old daughter Kat. Instead it's another parent, who reports that Kat is not, as promised, at the movies, but at a party--and makes a shocking allegation about her activities there. Furious, Tucker races to the party. Kat has departed, but a full-boil interrogation ends with one of the teenage boys sent crashing into a glass tabletop. Rage turns instantly to remorse, and Tucker is arrested. He could easily lose his home and his business. But, most importantly, will he lose his daughter?
Breaking Her Fall charts the passage of a family through an all-too-imaginable crisis with extraordinary realism and transcendant grace.

"Somehow--and dramatizing this "somehow" is Goodwin's strength--a family, nearly destroyed in a single instant on a single night, manages to become whole again. What ultimately matters in this novel is finding a way to "break" a daughter's fall and heal a father's heart."--The Washington Post Book World

Stephen Goodwin is a professor of creative writing at George Mason University and the author of three previous books. A former director of the literature program at the National Endowment for the Arts, he has served two terms as president of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. He lives in Washington, D.C.

"Breaking Her Fall is a corker-- vivid, brilliantly marbled with harmonies and textures and people vibrant with life." -- Richard Bausch

Just before eleven on an ordinary summer night in Washington, D.C., Tucker Jones picks up the phone, expecting to hear that his teenage daughter, Kat, is back from the movies. But the caller is another parent, a man who tells Tucker that Kat was actually at a party-- and makes a shocking allegation about what happened to her there. From that moment Breaking Her Fall sweeps irresistibly forward to it s wrenching, and redemptive, conclusion.

In a blind rage, Tucker races to the part to find Kat already departed, but his full-boil interrogation of the boys still present spills over into a confrontation-- and ends with one of the boys crashing into a glass tabletop. In a second, his rage turns to remorse, and he soon finds himself under arrest. Tucker could easily lose his home and his business, but he is most concerned about losing his daughter.

Stephen Goodwin writes with insight and rare power about the way that passion rearranges lives. As Tucker and Kat and everyone around them seek to repair the damages of that night, Breaking Her Fall charts their uncommonly difficult passage from despair to reconciliation and hope with extraordinary grace.