The Girl Who Fell to Earth

Award-winning filmmaker and writer Sophia Al-Maria's The Girl Who Fell to Earth is a funny and wry coming-of-age memoir about growing up in between American and Gulf Arab cultures. Part family saga and part personal quest, The Girl Who Fell to Earth traces Al-Maria's journey to make a place for herself in two different worlds.

When Sophia Al-Maria's mother sends her away from rainy Washington State to stay with her husband's desert-dwelling Bedouin family in Qatar, she intends it to be a sort of teenage cultural boot camp. What her mother doesn't know is that there are some things about growing up that are universal. In Qatar, Sophia is faced with a new world she'd only imagined as a child. She sets out to find her freedom, even in the most unlikely of places.

The Girl Who Fell to Earth takes readers from the green valleys of the Pacific Northwest to the dunes of the Arabian Gulf and on to the sprawling chaos of Cairo. Struggling to adapt to her nomadic lifestyle, Sophia is haunted by the feeling that she is perpetually in exile: hovering somewhere between two families, two cultures, and two worlds. She must make a place for herself--a complex journey that includes finding young love in the Arabian Gulf, rebellion in Cairo, and, finally, self-discovery in the mountains of Sinai.

The Girl Who Fell to Earth heralds the arrival of an electric new talent and takes us on the most personal of quests: the voyage home.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 11/27/2012
ISBN: 9780061999758
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.20w x 0.80d
Award: Middle East Book Awards - Winner

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 10/08/2012
Booklist 10/15/2012 pg. 12
Kirkus Reviews 11/15/2012
Shelf Awareness 12/14/2012
New York Times Book Review 02/03/2013 pg. 18

Accelerated Reader Quiz #/Name: 163515 / Girl Who Fell to Earth: A Memoir
Reading Level: 7.4 / Interest Level: Upper Grade / Point Value: 12