Hanna Who Fell from the Sky

July 24, 2017
Hanna, the heroine of this uneven coming-of-age novel with a fantasy element from Canadian author Meades (The Last Hiccup), lives in Clearhaven, an idyllic rustic town whose inhabitants practice polygamy. As Hanna nears her 18th birthday, she becomes formally betrothed to a middle-aged man who watched her grow up and already has four wives. But then she meets Daniel, a Clearhaven resident who has recently returned from a nearby city. As her wedding day approaches, her growing attraction to Daniel causes her to question not only her role in Clearhaven but the town’s entire culture. Her father, Jotham, has a financial stake in her union, which becomes more muddled when her mother, Kara, Jotham’s second wife, discloses the secret about Hanna’s origins suggested by the title. Hanna’s plight is sure to move many readers. Others, however, will be put off by the vague, unimaginative worldbuilding and lose patience as Hanna vacillates between doing what the community expects and doing what feels right for her. Agent: Anne Bohner, Pen & Ink Literary.

April 1, 2017

Winner of the 2013 Canadian Author's Award for Fiction, Meades makes his U.S. debut with the story of Hanna, who lives in an isolated religious community with her father, his four wives, and her 14 siblings. At age 18, about to become the fifth wife of a much older man, she encounters a stranger who challenges her to reconsider everything she's been taught. Mainstream appeal; a 100,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2017

With ten days to go before her 18th birthday and marriage to town elder Edwin, Hanna, raised as part of a polygamous household, begins to question her life. Her father, Jotham, is a classic Jekyll/Hyde drunk, and her mother, Kara, bypasses reality completely by embedding a mythological story about how "Hanna fell from the sky" and is therefore destined for a better fate than the rest of Clearhaven's women. Hanna's awakening is intensified by a relationship with Daniel, the only redemptive male in this story, and the consequences they face after enjoying a Rumspringa-esque adventure together. Affected by the continual violence and patriarchal dominance she faces, Hanna's resolve to forsake her marriage constantly wavers, becoming tedious by the end. Elements remain unresolved, and the juxtaposition of Hanna's origin story against the pillars of her community's faith are never fully explored. VERDICT Disturbing on many levels. The women are constant prey, and Meades (The Last Hiccup) creates palpable terror. This is closer to Chris Cleave's Little Bee than David Ebershoff's The Nineteenth Wife. [See Prepub Alert, 3/13/17.]--Tina Panik, Avon Free P.L., CT

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2018

For Hanna, a member of a small cult community, her fate has already been decided. Never before has she questioned her abusive father's four wives and her own 14 brothers and sisters until she is assigned to become the fifth wife to a man more than twice her age. Enter Daniel, a member of the community who has lived outside of the cult. He challenges her to question her fate and pushes her to find her own path. Also secretly nudging her along is her mother, Kara, who believes that Hanna is meant for more and tells her a magical tale of how she was born, tumbling from the sky. As she begins to fall for Daniel, Hanna starts craving liberation and freedom, and she faces a difficult decision: Should she follow her heart or choose what is familiar and safe? The book takes place in a one-week time frame, so the story moves along quickly, and it picks up the pace nearer the conclusion. VERDICT The inner dynamics of the cult paired with the romantic interlude make this book approachable for older YA audiences looking for an escapist romance or a more realistic heroine to cheer on until the climatic end.-Stephanie Wilkes, Good Hope Middle School, West Monroe, LA

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 15, 2017
On the verge of her arranged marriage, a teenage girl begins questioning the cult she has been raised in.Hanna will be 18 in less than two weeks, and as is tradition in Clearhaven, she will be wed on her birthday. She is betrothed to her father's friend Edwin and will be his fifth wife. But as the day approaches, Hanna becomes increasingly uneasy about leaving her disabled younger sister, Emily, as well as her other siblings and sister-mothers, in her abusive father's care. Hanna also meets Daniel, a boy her own age who has been across The Road and into the city beyond, and during their conversations, Hanna begins to question what kind of future she wants. Hanna's mother, Kara, encourages her to consider options other than being forced into marriage by offering her more details about her birth, including a story in which Hanna "fell from the sky." As the day of her wedding approaches, Hanna must decide whether she can protect herself and her family from the future that her father and Edwin have preordained. In his U.S. debut, Meades (For the Love of Mary, 2016, etc.) excels at creating a world both familiar and strange, in which the stories people are told, and the ones they choose to believe, wield great power. The emphasis on faith, the fantastical and mythological, invites the reader to also question what elements of the story are real and which are the collective delusion of a small, removed community--and then to ask whether that would make these experiences any less real. Characters are dynamic, full of complex needs and desires, and the story moves quickly with ever increasing urgency as Hanna's day of reckoning approaches with exigent dangers from both inside and outside her home. An engrossing, richly layered novel.

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