“Everyone is from someplace. We all have stories, our lives unfolding along crooked lines, colliding in unexpected ways.”

I didn’t realize until after finishing Before the Fall that Noah Hawley writes and produces the TV series Fargo. It definitely made sense though after completing this incredibly well-written thriller. Those of y’all who like Liane Moriarty — add this to your TBR.

“Everyone has their own path. The choices they’ve made. How any two people end up in the same place at the same time is a mystery. You get on an elevator with a dozen strangers. You ride a bus, wait in line for the bathroom. It happens every day. To try to predict the places we’ll go and the people we’ll meet would be pointless.”

On a short trip back to NYC from Martha’s Vineyard, a private jet crashes into the ocean. It had 11 people on board, including the crew, but only 2 survived. The rest of the novel travels between the past (who are these people, why were they on the plane, might they have been the cause of the crash?) and the present, as the survivors try to learn how to deal with life, and the investigators involved try to find out what happened.

With all of the changes in time and perspective, this novel could have become very confusing. But Hawley does a fantastic job of giving enough backstory and detail on each character that they become individuals in your mind, rather than a stream of names and titles. It’s very fast-paced, and I think I read almost 300 pages in one sitting because I could not put it down. He also makes some very serious commentary on wealth and privilege, as well as the role of the media in disaster reporting and breaking scandals (he doesn’t sound like a fan).