Fall on your Knees

Fall on Your Knees (1996), first-time novelist Ann-Marie MacDonald’s ambitious multigenerational family saga set in the early decades of the 20th century, moves from the bleak coastal towns of Canada’s Cape Breton Island to the bustling New York City of the Jazz Era. Recalling both the psychological richness of William Faulkner’s family sagas set in Yoknapatawpha County and the dark passions in the Gothic tales of Flannery O’Connor, Fall on Your Knees follows three very different sisters, Kathleen, Mercedes, and Frances Piper, and their struggle to find the sanctity and dignity promised by their Catholic faith in a lurid world of violence, greed, and aberrant lust. In the interrelated stories of the Piper clan, the novel investigates The Urgency of Sexuality, The Corrosive Effects of Secrets, The Terrifying Immediacy of Death, and The Conflict Between Flesh and Spirit. Fall on Your Knees is widely regarded as a work of magical realism.

The novel was an immediate sensation and became an international best-seller translated into more than 20 languages. It earned the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best First Novel, as well as the Canadian Writers Association Prize for Best Novel.