Selected for Oprah’s Book club in 2002, Fall on Your Knees is a breathtaking novel that takes the reader to the shores of Nova Scotia, inside the lives of the mysterious Piper family. Ann-Marie MacDonald’s stunning ability to chronicle such a dark tale makes this novel the perfect companion to a free weekend. With every turn of the page, Fall on Your Knees will have the reader begging for more, craving to know what could possibly come next in the rise and fall of the Pipers.
Four generations pass by the Piper family in Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fall on Your Knees, each carrying their own weight of the household’s past and ongoing trail of secrecy and perversion. The actions of the father set the stage for his offspring, engendering a life of hardship and sacrifice. The four sisters; Kathleen, Mercedes, Frances, and Lily depend on one another for survival as their lives increasingly become more difficult. Bearing the cross of their father’s flawed past, the Piper sisters are mercilessly forced out of the innocence of their youth.
As the years pass, the sisters eventually grow to become young women. Kathleen, the eldest sister, sets the overall tone in MacDonald’s work. Blessed with beauty and the singing voice of an angel, Kathleen is sent by her father to live in New York City with an aunt where she will take strict vocal lessons to master becoming the Opera singer she wishes to be. It is there that the story of Kathleen becomes vague and intriguing, being told only through various letters and diary entries found between chapters, slowly piecing together a tragedy. Her life is a mystery to the remaining Piper sisters and to the reader as well. The three sisters are affected individually by the disturbed fate of their beloved sister.
Eventually, the tempestuous story of Kathleen’s life in New York is told, detailing forbidden sexual desires and acts of passion. Kathleen finds unexpected love with her piano player, Rose. As a black, cross-dressing woman, Rose represents the forbidden fruit of 1920’s New York City. Not only was this a time when interracial romance was illicit, but homosexuality was considered a mental disorder worthy of hospitalization. Kathleen, a girl growing up the envy of her female classmates, winding up in a lesbian relationship with a black woman is such an extreme contrast to what the reader imagines of Kathleen, making this revelation one that moves the heart and reimagines the “happily ever after” we all believe in.
The placement of Rose and her involvement inevitably come as a shock to the reader, to believe that this beautiful, gifted, fair-skinned girl from the ocean shore would wind up in a steamy lesbian affair with a black woman. The author flawlessly delivered the blow at the perfect moment; with only pages to go, when the reader is begging to know just what happened to the promising young girl. The shock is enough to leave the jaw wide open, but our hearts crushed. MacDonald takes the typical novel about young women to the next level by opening us up to this queer encounter, making it one for the list on books you must read. The elegance of the storytelling, the shocking encounters, and the haunting connections in the Piper family tree come together to set Fall on Your Knees apart from it’s queer literature peers.
