Ann-Marie MacDonald

Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book

Following the curves of history in the first half of the twentieth century, Fall On Your Knees takes us from haunted Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, through the battle fields of World War One, to the emerging jazz scene of New York City and into the lives of four unforgettable sisters. The mythically charged Piper family—James, a father of intelligence and immense ambition, Materia, his Lebanese child-bride, and their daughters: Kathleen, a budding opera Diva; Frances, the incorrigible liar and hell-bent bad girl; Mercedes, obsessive Catholic and protector of the flock; and Lily, the adored invalid who takes us on a quest for truth and redemption—is supported by a richly textured cast of characters. Together they weave a tale of inescapable family bonds, of terrible secrets, of miracles, racial strife, attempted murder, birth and death, and forbidden love. Moving and finely written, Fall On Your Knees is by turns dark and hilariously funny, a story—and a world—that resonate long after the last page is turned.

Fall on Your Knees (Oprah's Book Club)

Conor Murphy

All James wanted at fifteen was to belt his father once. All he wanted at fifteen and a half was to hear his mother play the piano once more, but she was dead of a dead baby before he finished the job. James took a tartan blanket she'd woven, and the good books she had taught him to read, and tucked them into the saddlebag of the old pit pony. He came back in, sat down at the piano and plunged into "Moonlight Sonata." Stopped after four bars, got up, adjusted C sharp, sat down and swayed to the opening of The Venetian Boat Song." Satisfied, he stopped after five bars, took the bottle of spirits from his mother's sewing basket, doused the piano and set it alight. He got on the blind pony and rode out of Egypt.

A WAR CHANGES PEOPLE IN a number of ways. It either shortcuts you to your very self; or it triggers such variations that you might as well have been a larva, pupating in dampness, darkness and tightly wrapped puttees. Then, providing you don't take flight from a burst shell, you emerge from your khaki cocoon so changed from what you were that you fear you've gone mad, because people at home treat you as though you were someone else. Someone who, through a bizarre coincidence, had the same name, address and blood ties as you, but who must have died in the war. And you have no choice but to live as an impostor because you can't remember who you were before the war. There's a simple but horrible explanation for this: you were born in the war. You slid, slick, bloody and fully formed, out of a trench.

The Great War was the greatest changer of them all.

Teresa has been given a cup of tea in the front hall of New Waterford General Hospital. The head nursing sister was the first to come across her. If it had been that nice young intern from away, the hysterical woman would have been given a shot in the vein instead of a cup of tea. The head nurse, however, has noticed that, whether they drink the tea or not, the mere act of reaching out to receive something that must not be spilled seems to have a profoundly calming effect on all but the downright insane.

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