Ann-Marie MacDonald - Fall On Your Knees

FALL ON YOUR KNEES

A Novel

by

ANN-MARIE MACDONALD

Published by: SIMON and SCHUSTER

Rockefeller Center 1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Copyright 1996 by Ann-Marie MacDonald

BOOK JACKET INFORMATION

No. 1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

OPRAH'S Book Club

"This big, bold, epic shocker of a novel reads as if John Irving met Joyce Carol Oates in her Gothic period.... It's a wild ride."--SANDRA SCOFIELD, CHICAGO TRIBUNE

WINNER OF THE COMMONWEALTH WRITERS PRIZE

FOR BEST FIRST BOOK

"This resonant first novel ... [has] a mythic quality that allows dark, half-buried secrets to be gracefully and chillingly revealed."

--JOHN MOTYKA, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

The Piper family is steeped in secrets, lies, and unspoken truths. At the eye of the

storm is one secret that threatens to shake their lives--even destroy them.

Set on stormy Cape Breton Island off Nova Scotia, Fall on Your Knees is an internationally acclaimed multigenerational saga that chronicles the lives of four unforgettable sisters. Theirs is a world filled with driving ambition, inescapable family bonds, and forbidden love.

Compellingly written, by turns menacingly dark and hilariously funny, this is an epic tale of five generations of sin, guilt, and redemption.

"At her brightest moments, when various cultures and voices clash and merge in a great rush of energetic prose, MacDonald nears Rushdie-like heights."--RACHEL STOLL, SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER AND CHRONICLE

"Fall on Your Knees does not disappoint; this is an ambitiously big story --refreshingly old-fashioned in its wide scope, the sheer number of central characters, and the tale's own epiclike complexity."

--LIESEL LITZENBURGER,

DETROIT NEWSSTCOMFREE

PRESS

"This richly layered tale of the secrets within several generations of a Canadian family is both feverishly intense and darkly humorous."

--DAILY VARIETY

ANN-MARIE MACDONALD is a writer and actor. Her play Goodnight Desdemona (good Morning Juliet) won the Governor General's Award, the Chalmers Award, and the Canadian Author's Association Award. She won a Gemini for her role in the film Where the Spirit Lives and was nominated for a Genie for her role in I've Heard the Mermaids Singing. She lives and works in Toronto.

VISIT US ON THE WORLD WIDE

WEB http://www.spiritimonspiritays.com

FICTION

More Praise for

Fall on Your Knees

"In this mesmerizing book, Ann-Marie MacDonald stuns us with her graceful journey into the dark secrets of four generations of men and women. The breadth of MacDonald's vision is extraordinary. Magical, mythological in its scope, Fall on Your Knees transports us into a reality, at once horrifying and familiar, that we cannot bear to turn away from."

--Kim Barnes, author of In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in an Unknown

Country

"Fall on Your Knees proves that sisterhood is powerful--but not exactly as we thought it would be. It's a bit like performing the Stations of the Cross to rock 'n' roll."

--Rita Mae Brown, author of Rubyfruit Jungle and Riding

Shotgun

"MacDonald's finest tool is her narrative voice, an intimate, companionable voice that makes of this novel a confidence whispered in a pillow.... She has found the language of the heart.... There is no resisting this story."

--Joan Thomas, Globe and Mail

"A magnificent novel ... [Fall on Your Knees] follows in the Victorian tradition of a big story widely told, a story of historical change in a community of crimes half-concealed inside a family's memories and of fearful secrets slowly unraveled."

--Philippa Gregory, The London Sunday Times

"With Fall on Your Knees, playwright MacDonald has taken a surprising leap into the front ranks of major Canadian novelists.... Fall on Your Knees is a novel of tremendous appeal with a wonderful title, wonderful characters, and a story of such power that

it lingers in the mind and continues to astonish long after the book has been put down. Eloquent, richly textured, and eminently readable."

--London Free Press

"A phenomenal novel ... these are the sorts of characters, both beautiful and ugly, who stay with you forever."

--Emma Perry, Time Out London

"With Fall on Your Knees, Ann-Marie MacDonald has woven a complex and fascinating story filled with entrancing, unforgettable characters. I am in awe of her work, which cuts to the bone of family relationships with a surgeon's expertise and a writer's depth of emotion."

--Lisa See, author of On Gold Mountain

"This gorgeously realized family saga shot to the top of Canada's bestseller list shortly after its release. It deserves no less attention in the U.s. market. Highly recommended."

--Library Journal

"A full-bodied, ever-rolling debut, the story of a talented Cape Breton family with more than its share of repression and tragedy ... an accomplished, considerably affecting saga."

--Kirkus Reviews

"[A] lyrical, complex, near-mythic debut novel ... remarkable.... Most of all--beyond superb characterizations, an evocative sense of time and place, and divinely intricate plotting--MacDonald knows about the vagaries of love."

--Ruth Coughlin, Newsday

"Fevered ... a whomping achievement." --Angie Jabine, The Oregonian

"A delicious story, one of those sweeping family sagas to take on summer vacations and savor.... MacDonald is a master of exciting story-telling, of suspense and surprise. She has a dramatic touch that can

elicit gasps from readers."

--Montreal Gazette

"Ambitious ... MacDonald's gallows humor serves as a warning to all those who expect a traditional historical epic--although she knows well how to balance the genre's conventions with dark wit."

--Nathalie op de Beeck, Out

"Brilliantly crafted ... profoundly and refreshingly different ... MacDonald has constructed a plot worthy of Victor Hugo, a novel that is like peeling an onion (not without tears) in its teasing revelations of truth.... A standout."

--Vancouver Sun

"Stunning.... The book and the talent behind it are big. The story is riveting, the characters achingly human, and the writing will take your breath away.... [MacDonald] has leapt into the first rank of fiction writers."

--Toronto Star

"Magnetic ... a dizzying leap into a mind so rich and complex you spend almost as much time marveling how she got there as enjoying the results.... Compelling and original ... MacDonald succeeds brilliantly in building a world that, at least for the satisfying length of time it take to finish Fall on Your Knees, gloriously supersedes all else."

--Financial Post

"Impressive.... From the haunted first sentence [MacDonald] displays the assured touch of a skilled fiction writer."

--MacLean's

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Dedicated with love and gratitude to Cheryl Daniels and Maureen White

Thanks and Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank the following individuals and organizations, as well as to acknowledge certain books that were particularly helpful in the course of her research. David Abbass, Sister Simone Abbass CND, The Canada Council, Cape Breton's Magazine, Cheryl Daniels, Diane Flacks, Lily Flacks, Rita Fridella, Nic Gotham, Malcolm Johannesen, Honora MacDonald Johannesen, James Weldon Johnson's Black Manhattan, Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory, Daphne Duval Harrison's Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920's, Arsin@ee Khanjian, Suzanne Khuri, Margaret MacClintock, Cuddles MacDonald, Dude MacDonald, John Hugh MacDonald, Katie MacDonald, Laurel MacDonald, Sister Margaret A. MacDonald CND, Mary Teresa Abbass MacDonald, Harold MacPhee and The Black Cultural Centre of Nova