A FAMILY OF GREAT FALLS is a trip back in time, a story of love and loss and family, a perfect gem of a book. Debra A Daniel makes you smile and yearn, breaks your heart and lifts you up.
~ NY Times Bestselling author Ann Hood, The Knitting Circle and The Book That Matters Most
Debra A Daniel is a natural story teller. I was immediately drawn into A Family of Great Falls and involved with the characters’ lives. Beautifully written with humour and heart, this novella focuses on the daughters of an undertaker in the USA, in the 1920s and 30s. For them, death is a part of everyday life. The story is also about identity, how in different ways, the girls and their mother are determined not to succumb to the wishes of others when personal tragedy affects their lives. I was rooting for them all the way. And that is further testament to Daniel’s skills as a writer.
~ Jude Higgins, The Chemist’s House
In A Family of Great Falls, the eponymous town is home to siblings Willie and Jeanette and parents, Pearl and Henry. It is 1928 and Henry owns the local funeral parlour. The family are on the cusp of change; prosperity and social standing beckon, but there is indeed, a fall ahead. This novella is a triumph, showing the range of the form to encompass an epic tragedy, the minutiae of personal grief and resilience, and moves across decades with the lightest of touches. I was utterly absorbed.
~ Alison Woodhouse, The House on the Corner
Two sisters growing up with a sense of the potential promise that life may hold, as well as the dark realities that are unavoidable with a father who, as an undertaker, is the ‘keeper of the dead’ and a brother buried in the town cemetery. Oh, and a name that must be buried and farewelled, too. Tender but not sentimental, this is a balanced set of stories that reveal the bonds of sisterhood and the way two young girls face the hardest challenges.
~ Michelle Elvy, the other side of better and the everrumble
Paperback ISBN 978-1-912095-47-6; 133mm x 203mm; 132pp
£11.99 GBP