Synopses & Reviews
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 terrorists plastic explosive ripped the plane apart over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Davids 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. Davids death left Ken with a void that both crushed and consumed him. What were his brothers 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 brothers 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 brothers world. From Davids 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 Davids 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 days news, The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky is an incandescent and unforgettable account of one mans struggle to find inspiration in his brothers life and create a life of his own. What begins as a tragedy turns into a love story of deeply affirming power.
Review
"An original and compelling memoir of life and death. This story of the eternal battles and love affairs of brotherhood is meditative, confused, angry, and ironic. We watch Dornstein save himself amid the ashes of a terrorist attack on Americans and start a life of his own. And we are grateful for this time with him." Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead
Review
"A heartbreaking, deeply personal memoir of a brothers quest to know the unknowable, to make sense of what doesnt make sense. Ken Dornstein has written a stunningly haunting, honest work about finding himself." A. M. Homes, author of The Safety of Objects
Review
"Dornstein's account of his relationship with his brother and of his own self-examination is a startlingly honest, completely absorbing look at loss and brotherly love." Vanessa Bush, Booklist (starred review)