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And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott was a whirlwind of a reading experience. Indigenous motherhood and familial bonds, grief, addiction, mental illness, racism, Mohawk storytelling and the way this knowledge is preyed upon by colonial institutions are some of the subjects focused on throughout the novel.

The first portion follows Alice as she grapples with the loss of her mother and feeling out of place after leaving her community and moving to a predominately white neighborhood with her husband Steve and their baby Dawn. We witness Alice falling into the depths of something immense while trying to write a retelling of a Haudenosaunee creation story.

The latter half of the novel takes us to a uniquely miraculous climax which brought me to tears. Elliott ties everything together in such a brilliant way and as an Indigenous reader I was left ruminating on how ceremony, love and unbreakable bonds carry us through seas of intergenerational trauma. With that love we are never lost.

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