Towers Falling

Jewell Parker Rhodes’s novel Towers Falling was published in 2016. It takes place in Brooklyn in New York City and is told through the eyes of its protagonist, Dèja Barnes. Parker Rhodes is the author of several other children’s books, including Black Brother, Black Brother; Ghost Boys; and The Louisiana Girls trilogy. She currently serves as the Virginia G. Piper Endowed Chair and Director of the Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University.

Set 15 years after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the novel grapples with their lasting effects on one girl’s family and community. Dèja Barnes is a fifth grader at a new school as it introduces a new curriculum addressing these events. She begins to discover a connection between the attacks and her father’s mysterious symptoms that keep him from helping his family through their homelessness.

This study guide refers to the 2020 edition published by Little, Brown and Company.

Plot Summary

Towers Falling opens at Avalon Family Residence, a shelter for those experiencing homelessness. The novel’s narrator and protagonist, Dèja, lives with her two siblings and both of her parents in one room of the shelter.