PAPER AIRPLANES

Forney explores one woman’s emotional turbulence in the years following the events of September 11, 2001, in Forney’s debut novel.

Erin and Daniel are a young couple who fall in love hard and fast in college. She’s from a tightly wound family from Texas with high expectations, and he comes from a large, more easygoing family in the Bronx. Despite their different backgrounds, “There was something about the two of them that fit. It was easy, comfortable.” After getting married, they move to New York City together, where Erin is a lawyer and Daniel works at an investment bank in the World Trade Center. However, an argument results in Erin’s going on vacation to Spain with a friend, rather than attending Daniel’s mother’s birthday party. While overseas, Erin witnesses the Twin Towers fall on a television in the hotel bar. Shock gives way to panic as she desperately tries to reach Daniel and get home. When Erin finally returns, the novel chronicles her stages of grief from denial to anger to self-destruction. As time passes, she increasingly abuses alcohol and pills to try to numb her pain and even considers suicide. After spending copious amounts of money on unnecessary items, she finally gets one of several wake-up calls that force her to reckon with her life. Over the course of the novel, Forney mostly follows Erin as she spirals out of control. The monotony of her self-destruction does accurately reflect the affect of a depressed person. However, it also affects the momentum of the narrative, which often feels excessively slow. Ultimately, though, the novel effectively relates a love story about a marriage that’s imperfect but everlasting, and about the guilt that comes when we survive and must keep on living. Toward the end of the novel, Erin reflects, “Freedom was her fate. It walked hand in hand with loneliness,” and readers follow her as she decides whether to let her spirit break or to find the strength to keep going.

A realistic but slow-paced story about love, loss, and tenacity.