If I Fall, If I Die

Five-year old Jack has only ever known one room as his home. Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. Both mother and son, however, must learn to navigate a whole new set of challenges once they’re released from the room.

Like the mother in If I Fall, Belle Dearing is a misunderstood woman whose behaviour makes her a target. Belle is the local crazy lady, the dishevelled woman whose house has fallen into disrepair, who strikes fear in local children and disgust among her neighbours. But within the crazy lady is a life derailed, unmoored. Who is Belle Dearing? And what has made her the way she is? Did she molest the boy across the street?

Freddy is autistic, seventeen, and trying to navigate his way at a new school. His mom is gone and he lives with his dad who drinks too much. At his new school he reconnects with a girl named Saskia but now she is hardly the same person he remembers. She doesn’t smile. And she doesn’t talk. But their reunion provides him with respite in a difficult time.

Three siblings come together for their agoraphobic mother’s funeral but Hilary, Thomas and Billy can not agree on a plan of action. Hilary put her life on hold to care for her mother, but now she’s not wanting to leave the house. Billy is turning to drink to deal with his dysfunctional family. Thomas is the most successful of the three but he’s not found the courage to tell his siblings that he’s gay.

Run’s older brother Kwong is the king of Chinksta Rap in Red Deer. Run isn’t a fan but when Kwong goes missing just days before his crowning performance and their mom gets wounded by a stray bullet, Run finds himself, with his sidekick, Ali, in the middle of a violent battle between Red Deer’s rival gangs, the Apes and the Necks.

The narrative moves from a small town during one extraordinarily hot summer at the close of the fifties when a death changes everything, to the sixties and seventies when Amy marries, goes to live in the city, and begins to have reason to fear for her young son’s well-being, the novel explores the inadvertent damage that can be done within the most well-meaning of families.