“Fall on Your Knees”
by Ann-Marie MacDonald
Published: December 1998
ISBN: 0394281780

(Updated: July 16, 2005.)

From the Publisher…

At the start of the 20th century, James Piper sets fire to his dead mother’s piano and heads out across Cape Breton Island to find a new place to live, eventually eloping with 13-year-old Materia Mahmoud, the daughter of wealthy, traditional Lebanese parents. And so, from early on, Ann-Marie MacDonald establishes some major themes: racial tension, isolation, passion and forbidden love, which will gradually lead to incest, death in childbirth, and even murder. At the centre of this epic story is the nature of family love, beginning with the Piper sister who depend on one another for survival. Their development as characters — beautiful Kathleen, the promising diva; saintly Mercedes; Frances, the mischievous bad girl, who tries to bear the family’s burden; and disabled Lily, everyone’s favourite — forms the heart of the novel. And then there is James, their flawed father.

Oh my. What a book!

Completely different from The Way the Crow Flies but the power and the punch is so the same.

Amazing. Haunting. And, definitely, knee-buckling. A five out of five hearts for me.