The Year We Fell From Space

The Year We Fell From Space, a young adult novel by Amy Sarig King, follows Liberty Johansen, a 12-year-old girl who is struggling to acclimate to life after her parent's separation. Between the tense situation at home, with her father living with a new girlfriend and her mother remaining frustratingly steadfast, and the terrors of middle school dating and friendship, Liberty is at a loss. She soon finds solace in her passion—astronomy—and in a meteorite, which fell from space around the same time that Liberty's life fell apart.

Liberty Johansen is 12 years old and struggling. When the novel begins, her father has just moved out of their family home. Lib and her younger sister, Jilly, who is only nine, are deeply confused by the sudden turn of events. Jilly is deeply anxious about life and the sudden change in their family; meanwhile, Liberty's mother is evasive, yet somehow steadfast. She refuses to answer any of Lib and Jilly's pointed questions about their father and his whereabouts.

Lib is a passionate amateur astronomer. She used to draw and redraw star maps with her father, spending hours studying current constellations, and tracing new patterns to think about new ways of seeing and understanding the stars. She also has a prized meteorite, which she brought home one day, around the time her father moved out. This meteorite becomes Lib's only solace when nobody else will answer her questions. She talks to the meteorite, and the moon rock talks back.



At school, Lib is having similar problems. Everyone knows she hasn't seen her dad in months, and it is making relationships at school rocky, at best. Lib's friend Leah “excommunicates” her from their friend group, and Finn, another friend who Lib knows is also the product of a strained marriage, jumps on the bandwagon. Lib changes lunch tables and starts eating lunch with another exile—Malik, an Iranian American boy whom nobody will befriend.

After months of not seeing her father, Lib and Jilly are thrilled when their parents finally manage to coordinate a reintroduction. However, Lib is enraged when her father reveals that he is living with his new girlfriend, a woman Lib and Jilly have not met but whom they despise all the same. Lib wants nothing more than to save her family from breaking, but it doesn't seem possible. Unsure what else to do, she reaches out to her school counselor for help.

With the counselor, Lib is finally able to talk to someone other than her meteorite about the problems going on at home and in the classroom. She describes her ex-communication and her anger over her parents’ inability to see the impact their divorce is having on their two children. From time with the counselor, who explains to Lib that divorce is similar to grief and that a marriage must be mourned, Lib begins to explain to her parents that their divorce is shared among all four members of the family.



Despite the pain that she experiences, and the many changes that come her way, Lib finds empowerment in her ability to communicate what is going on in her life. Though Lib is not fully accepting of her new life or her father's new girlfriend, she does begin to realize that she has more control over her life than she knew.

King is the author of short fiction and young adult novels. Raised in Reading, Pennsylvania, she moved to Ireland after graduating high school. She lived in Dublin for two years and then moved to the country with her husband, where they renovated a farm and she worked with adult literacy students. While she was waiting to receive a work permit in Ireland, King read a book a day, essentially training herself in classics and creative writing. She eventually returned to Pennsylvania and began writing novels. Some of her novels include Still Life with Tornado, I Crawl Through It, Glory O'Brien's History of the Future, Reality Boy, and Ask the Passengers. She has received dozens of awards for her work, including a Printz Award, many ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults listings, an Edgar Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and more. The Year We Fell From Space was published in 2019.