The Girl Who Fell From The Sky by Heidi Durrow

 

Rachel has been left alone, the only survivor of a family tragedy.  Her mother was Danish, her father black.  The two met when her father was sent overseas by the Army and the family, Rachel and a brother and sister, lived in Denmark.  When her parents broke up, her mother came to the US with the man she loved next.  

After the tragedy, Rachel is sent to live with her father's mother, a grandmother she has never met.  Rachel looks more like her mother and this is the first time she has lived in an African-American neighborhood.  She knows nothing about the culture and her grandmother is much stricter than she is used to.

At school, she is ostracized.  Her looks make the others think she feels superior and one girl in particular wants to fight her from the first day.  When she finally makes a friend, it is one of the few white girls in the school.  She gets a lot of attention from the boys as the beauty she inherited from her mother is compelling.   She hides the secret of what happened to her family as she feels it is shameful.

This book won the Bellwether Prize which is an award given to books concerning social issues.  It is the story of what it means to be biracial and how it often means not being accepted by either side that makes up the genetic makeup.  It was published in 2010 and I hope things have improved as the biracial population becomes larger.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.