Fallen Angels was #16 on the American Library Association’s list of the most frequently challenged books of 1990–2000 for its realistic depiction of war and those who fight in wars. Filled with unforgettable characters, not least Peewee Gates of Chicago who copes with war by relying on wisecracks and dark humor, Fallen Angels “reaches deep into the minds of soldiers” and makes “readers feel they are there, deep in the heart of war.”įallen Angels has won numerous awards and honors, including the Coretta Scott King Award, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, a Booklist Editors Choice, and a School Library Journal Best Book. A thoughtful young man with a gift for writing and love of basketball, Perry learns to navigate among fellow soldiers under tremendous stress and struggles with his own fear as he sees things he’ll never forget: the filling of body bags, the deaths of civilians and soldier friends, the effects of claymore mines, the fires of Napalm, and jungle diseases like Nam Rot.Īvailable as an e-book for the first time on the 25th anniversary of its publication, Fallen Angels has been called one of the best Vietnam War books ever and one of the great coming-of-age Vietnam War stories. Perry and his platoon-Peewee, Lobel, Johnson, and Brunner-come face-to-face with the Vietcong, the harsh realities of war, and some dark truths about themselves. Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, just out of his Harlem high school, enlists in the Army in the summer of 1967 and spends a devastating year on active duty. His foster parents lived in the African-American neighborhood of Harlem in New York City, and he spent most of his childhood and. Myers’s mother died three years after his birth, and his father, too poor to raise him, put him into foster care. Walter Dean Myers was born in West Virginia in 1937.

Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers is a young adult novel about seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, a Harlem teenager who volunteers for the Army when unable to afford college and is sent to fight in the Vietnam War. Walter Dean Myers and Fallen Angels Background.

Fallen angels walter dean