Eric Walters is a former Canadian teacher who has become a bit of a publishing star. He started writing books to motivate his students to care more about their creative work. In 2006, he published We All Fall Down, a look at what happened inside the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.
As the sequel, the action picks up the morning of September 12, 2001. Will and his father know that they are lucky to be alive after the collapse of twin towers. Will’s friend James has still not heard from his father, a fireman last seen going up the stairs of tower two to rescue those still trapped above.
The story mostly follows Will as he tries to help James deal with his father being missing, and, increasingly, and, increasingly, assumed dead. Through a variety of events, Will and James end up at ground zero where they both come face to face with the enormity of what has happened.
Walters has done a good job looking at what happens in the aftermath of a large, catastrophic event. He leads the reader through the impact of the terrorist attacks on individual people, neighbourhoods and the city as a whole. He seamlessly weaves real people into his narrative, giving us glimpses of Bush and Guilliani. He also has Will react in a natural way to the trauma he’s been through.
If there is one fault in this book, it is that Walters spends a lot of time on the emotions of the characters, which may alienate fans of the first book who were looking for a similar action based narrative.