She worries that Sadie might not marry, that their daughter will not be able to stay.Īnd then the event occurs that seems to fulfill Sadie's prophecies: A solar storm disrupts the electrical grid and the English planes fall from the sky. 'The women talk about it, and it troubles the deacons,' Hannah, Jacob's wife, tells him. She has visions about angels and the English falling from the sky, which makes her suspect in the eyes of some. Sadie has always been different, more sensitive. Jacob sits up with her, rocking her, trying to soothe his 'strange little bird.' Maybe it is because I am especially tender to the story, which is about a Pennsylvania Amish farmer named Jacob and his family in the wake of an apocalyptic climate event that drastically changes the lives of the people outside the Order - the everyone else the Amish refer to as 'the English.' Jacob has a 14-year-old daughter named Sadie, who has seizures that cause her to cry out in the night. We might tend to acknowledge the craft before the effect.īut I am reading a book by David Williams called When the English Fall (Algonquin, $24.95) on a flight from Little Rock to Atlanta, and there are tears in my eyes. Because we don't want to appear sentimental or vulnerable to kitsch, we might be careful not to overpraise the man-made thing.īecause we understand books are made of words selected by men and women like ourselves and because we might imagine them smiling at having tricked us into feeling what they contrive for us to feel, we might tend to withhold the highest praise.

Sometimes we forget this, because we are sophisticated creatures who fly on airplanes and have seen a lot of the world.

It is good to be susceptible to simple beauty.

David williams when the english fall