A Soft Place to Fall

This contemporary novel dares to tackle quite edgy material, including rape, a near-fatal knife fight, dysfunctional parents and teen pregnancy. But it’s less about violence than about how a bunch of damaged teens pushed into one classroom help or hinder one another as they cope with their difficult personal circumstances.

Happily, it has uplifting moments that are pure teen.

Ratchet shook his head to the beat, singing along. Schooner stood on the bed and joined in. He grabbed the pillow and pretended he was dancing with a girl, smiling as he belted out each word. Carina and I had never seen this side of Schooner. Out of the blue, Carin reached for my hand and pulled me up from the chair, singing.

A Soft Place to Fall is realistic and well-paced with language appropriate for older youths. Told in first-person from the point of view of Creighton (14-years-old for most of the novel), it focuses on a group of teenagers who’ve been relegated to an alternative school where their past and ongoing trauma affects their everyday lives and interactions. Most come from dysfunctional families and can barely be bothered to attend school. Luckily, there’s a kind and dedicated teacher there, but, when she has to leave, the sense of abandonment brings out the worst in some of her students (and the best in others).

The novel begins with Creighton’s childhood and takes quite a while to cover his life from the age of five into his teens. That risks leaving readers who thought they’d picked up a young-adult novel wondering if maybe it’s a children’s or middle-grade read. Too bad the author doesn’t leap straight into the teen years and reveal his childhood in flashbacks, instead. Still, this approach quickly establishes Creighton’s own difficulties, even if they pale beside those of his later schoolmates. And once we land in his teen years, we feel we know him well.

The dialogue is entirely real, although the author is more into description than conversation. The descriptive passages sometimes showcase great writing talent from this debut author.

Carlos had dark greasy hair that stuck out the sides of his black hoodie. His skin was white and pasty, with unhealed sores all around his mouth. Acne scars signaled a battle he had lost all too often, and his Guns N’ Roses hoodie pressed tightly against the rolls of skin that hung over his ripped jeans.

A Soft Place to Fall is all about resilience, and it certainly offers room for hope. The characters are refreshingly distinct from one another, and their gripping tales and tragic lives make the book difficult to put down. Certainly, all the characters grow in a satisfactory way by the end.

There are two minor problems: First, Creighton is disappointingly more narrator than central character. Indeed, because he is far less traumatized than his fellow students, he comes off as a bit boring. Very little actually happens to him; he seems to exist mostly to filter the actions and relationships of the others through his senses.

Second, the teacher to whom they all gravitate is unrealistically perfect, almost a goddess by her actions and words and the way in which the students regard her. She feels like the main character for a significant portion of the book; she steals the show from Creighton and his pals – a little disorienting in a young adult novel.

I thought about my other schools, the many classrooms and teachers. But I had never had a teacher like Ms. Hay. No one before had made me feel so cared for… No one was as kind as her. No one had ever welcomed me like she did. No one loved their students the way she loved us… Ms. Hay knew how to make us feel good, when nothing else in our lives was working.

Overall, however, A Soft Place to Fall is a well-told story with highly memorable characters and nail-biting situations. It doesn’t shrink from the gritty side of life, and ensures that readers come away with greater empathy for those who struggle. Indeed, the teacher’s methods gift readers with tools on how to handle those who lead more challenged lives.

We should all look forward to this author’s next book. (And is it any surprise she’s a teacher and counsellor?)