This is a superb novel that begs to be used in any number of classes. The characters Banks chooses to tell the stories of their lives leading up to the crash and in the months following it are remarkably different, providing contrasting angles and meanings on the same event. The simple, straightforward way Dolores Driscoll describes the day of the accident as she routinely picked up each of "her" children, or Bill Ansel's terse, pain-riddled prose ("The ony way I could go on living was to believe that I was not living"), are utterly authentic and evocative.

In choosing the voice of Nichole Burnell, Banks is also able to portray how family secrets like incest emerge in the midst of tragedy in the most unexpected ways; or with the character Mitchell Stephens, so lawyerly and vulnerable at the same time, illuminating an even fuller response to parental grief as he learns of his own "lost" daughter's drug-addicted HIV-positive status.

As these stories intersect with each other and weave together other accounts of how the families coped with this senseless tragedy, Banks helps readers explore the complexities of grief, the various struggles to make meaning of something so "wickedly unnatural," and the human capacity for forgiveness and hope. This book would be particularly effective to illustrate narrative voice.