And Then She Fell

A mind-bending, razor-sharp look at motherhood and mental health that follows a young Indigenous woman who discovers the picture-perfect life she always hoped for may have horrifying consequences

On the surface, Alice is exactly where she thinks she should be: She's just given birth to a beautiful baby girl, Dawn; her charming husband, Steve--a white academic whose area of study is conveniently her own Mohawk culture--is nothing but supportive; and they've moved into a new home in a posh Toronto neighborhood. But Alice could not feel like more of an impostor. She isn't connecting with her daughter, a struggle made even more difficult by the recent loss of her own mother, and every waking moment is spent hiding her despair from Steve and their ever-watchful neighbors, among whom she's the sole Indigenous resident. Even when she does have a minute to herself, her perpetual self-doubt hinders the one vestige of her old life she has left: her goal of writing a modern retelling of the Haudenosaunee creation story.

Then, as if all that wasn't enough, strange things start to happen. She finds herself losing bits of time and hearing voices she can't explain, all while her neighbors' passive-aggressive behavior begins to morph into something far more threatening. Though Steve assures her this is all in her head, Alice cannot fight the feeling that something is very, very wrong, and that in her creation story lies the key to her and Dawn's survival.... She just has to finish it before it's too late.

Told in Alice's raw and darkly funny voice, And Then She Fell is an urgent and unflinching exploration of inherited trauma, womanhood, denial, and false allyship, which speeds to an unpredictable--and surreal--climax.

Author: Alicia Elliott
Publisher: Dutton
Published: 09/26/2023
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.23lbs
Size: 9.27h x 6.33w x 1.29d
ISBN: 9780593473085


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 04/01/2023 pg. 11
Publishers Weekly 08/14/2023
Booklist 08/01/2023 pg. 19
Kirkus Reviews 08/15/2023

About the Author
Alicia Elliott is a Mohawk writer and editor living in Brantford, Ontario. She has written for The Globe and Mail, CBC, Hazlitt, and many others. She's had numerous essays nominated for National Magazine Awards, winning gold in 2017 and an honorable mention in 2020. Her short fiction was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2018, Best Canadian Stories 2018, and The Journey Prize Stories 30. Alicia was chosen by Tanya Talaga as the 2018 recipient of the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award. Her first book, A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, was a national bestseller in Canada. It was also nominated for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction and won the Forest of Reading Evergreen Award.