Mohawk author Alicia Elliott (A Mind Spread Out on the Ground) spotlights mental health, new motherhood, and family resilience in And Then She Fell, her bitingly hilarious, spine-tingling, genre-blurring fiction debut. Thirteen-year-old Alice gets talked out of a bad date by an unlikely counselor: Disney's Pocahontas, who gives the shocked Mohawk teenager a snarky lecture through her TV screen. Adult Alice lives in a stylish Toronto home with her husband, Steve, a white professor who happens to specialize in Mohawk culture, and their new baby, Dawn. She struggles to bond with the baby and tamp down her sense of injustice as Steve learns the Mohawk language to further his career. She thinks, "When you both die, Steve will have to translate your ancestors' words to you." Alice is also awash in grief after her mother's recent death, and grappling with doubt as she writes a modern version of the Haudenosaunee Creation Story. The mental wall she learned to erect as a teen has eroded, and she hears the voices of trees and a bathroom cockroach. Alice--and readers--are left wondering whether she's losing her sanity or discovering a new aspect of reality.
Elliott's ambitious, enthralling portrait of a brilliant young woman beset with racism, postpartum depression, and grief reminds readers that the truth is often multilayered. This provocative blend of drama and speculative fiction is charged with justified anger and overlaid with Indigenous stories and characters. Book clubs should consider this feminist parable a first choice. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads