The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi Durrow

Winner of the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, this is the story of a young biracial girl, growing up and trying to figure out how she fits into the world and who she is.  Rachel's mother was Danish and her father a black G.I.  They met and married in Germany.  There Rachel's mother never thought about her husband's skin color but when she arrives in America, she learns a whole new language to describe black people, none of it flattering. 
My favorite parts of the book are when Rachel talks about the "blue bottle" inside of her. It's where she puts all the feelings she can't speak about.  Eventually the bottle breaks but Rachel is resilient and she has been loved so while the bottle is shattered, Rachel is not.
I'm kind of a sucker for sad stories and this is definitely one of those but it has hope in it, too. It will stay with you.  You'll find yourself thinking about it long after you read the last page.
264 pp