Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11
Written and Foreword By: Mitchell Zuckoff / Narrated By: Sean Pratt
Length: 17 hrs and 24 mins
An instant “classic” that tells us sooo many stories, of loss, of course, but also of those living their haunted survival
I admit it. I’d set only two 9/11 audiobooks for review then second-guessed it and flailed around looking for two more to add for this year’s, 2020, anniversary of that horrible most wretched of days. But seriously, after American Dunkirk being sooooo infinitely disappointing, I was most ready to find something, ANYthing, that might make me feel SOMEthing. So I saw I had Mitchell Zuckoff’s Fall and Rise, and I figured yeh yeh yeh 17+ hours, but maybe I’d feeeeel SOMEthing.
Oh indeed I did!
At first I thought that maybe 102 Minutes was better and had “it” more in the way of stories of the fight for survival in the Twin Towers. After all, in that audiobook we were introduced to Brian and Stan, the surviving duo who made the talk show circuit in the days after. We heard of the window washer who used his squeegee to hack into layers of drywall to get people out of a stuck elevator. We heard of the FDNY men who carried Josephine down, step by oh so painful and plodding step, even as they’d been dashing out, desperately trying to evacuate the sole standing Tower.
But while I thought that at first, I must say that Zuckoff adds so much more to even these kinda sorta duplicate stories. They’re more rounded here, and there are postscripts added, and there are awesome observations made by each of these people that it was too early from when 102 Minutes came out. Josephine’s story, the stories of her FDNY honor guard, in particular caused a great big ol’ lump in my throat.
And when you add the stories of all the people in the planes, people working in the Pentagon (In particular a young newly-minted chaplain who once zoomed away from an incident where he might’ve slowed down to offer comfort and who now will NEVER make such a mistake again? Throwing himself into the chaos and destruction and tragedy outside the Pentagon? Sniffle, I say unto you: Sniffle and sob!), and you top it off with the volunteer fire chief’s experiences in Shanksville PA? You’ve a killer of an emotional rollercoaster of a book, my fellow Accomplice.
To add even more to this? Try seasoned narrator Sean Pratt doing some pretty heavy-duty lifting as he conveys horror and heartbreak, frustration and fear. Sometimes Pratt delivers the word-for-word recordings of the day: Say, 911 calls from the Towers, or NORAD command center and FAA communications, and he adds just the right amount of emotion and confusion, in keeping with what was known at the time, what was only guessed at with dawning horror, and what we’ll always look back on with shame due to the lack of clarity given the fraught time. And Pratt always delivers the humanity of each of the stories, whether Zuckoff is able to turn it into a longer narrative, or he’s only able to mention the person and their greatest dream as they rode to their deaths and into the final pages of history. Zuckoff himself offers the Foreword at the beginning, and he offers the Acknowledgements at the end. It was a good way to start and to finish such an emotional and action-packed work, and it perfectly bookended a grand performance by Pratt.
This audiobook and Bikeman reeeeally took me back to that day. I dunno why I even wanted to go there—it’s not like that was a good time by any means. Still, emotion seems to me like the best way to honor such an event. Such a little thing to offer: Our emotions. But it’s all we can.
Here, with Fall and Rise, I offer my own despair, my own hope, my own pride at this common and shared humanity. I offer it all now in 2020, and in each year to come. It’s offered to the fallen; it’s offered to the haunted survivors.
For I am haunted too.
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