Review: The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan

Title: The Day the Falls Stood Still

Author: Cathy Marie Buchanan

Pub­lisher: Hype­r­ion Books

Date (to be) Pub­lished: August 2009

Syn­op­sis: (From Ama­zon)

Steeped in the intrigu­ing his­tory of Nia­gara Falls, this epic love story is as rich, spell­bind­ing, and majes­tic as the falls themselves.

1915. The dawn of the hydro­elec­tric power era in Nia­gara Falls. Seventeen-​​year-​​old Bess Heath has led a shel­tered exis­tence as the youngest daugh­ter of the direc­tor of the Nia­gara Power Com­pany. After grad­u­a­tion day at her board­ing school, she is impa­tient to return to her pic­turesque fam­ily home near Nia­gara Falls. But when she arrives, noth­ing is as she had left it. Her father has lost his job at the power com­pany, her mother is reduced to tak­ing in sewing from the soci­ety ladies she once enter­tained, and Isabel, her viva­cious older sis­ter, is a shadow of her for­mer self. She has shut her­self in her bed­room, barely eating–and har­bor­ing a secret.

The night of her return, Bess meets Tom Cole by chance on a trol­ley plat­form. She finds her­self inex­plic­a­bly drawn to him–against her family’s strong objec­tions. He is not from their world. Rough-​​hewn and fear­less, he lives off what the river pro­vides and has an uncanny abil­ity to pre­dict the whims of the falls. His dar­ing river res­cues ren­der him a local hero and cast him as a threat to the power com­pa­nies that seek to har­ness the power of the falls for them­selves. As their lives become more fully entwined, Bess is forced to make a painful choice between what she wants and what is best for her fam­ily and her future.

Set against the tumul­tuous back­drop of Nia­gara Falls, at a time when dare­dev­ils shot the river rapids in bar­rels and great indus­trial for­tunes were made and lost as quickly as lives dis­ap­peared, The Day the Falls Stood Still is an intox­i­cat­ing debut novel.

Bonus:

Where Did It Come From?

My sta­ple of all ran­dom books, Barnes and Noble’s Bar­gain Books section.

Why Did I Choose It?

Did you read the syn­op­sis? How could I pass this up?

Review:

I loved this book.

Quite sur­pris­ing as the author’s first book, it was well writ­ten and intrigu­ing.  Buchanan takes a love story between two young peo­ple, the 17 year old Bess, and a river man named Tom, who is loosely based on an his­tor­i­cal fig­ure.  Buchanan draws you into the lives of these two and their life as they strug­gle with the begin­ning of the Hydro-​​Electric pow­er­house that wants to divert the water (all of it if they could) from the Nia­gara to cre­ate elec­tric­ity to make life bet­ter for all.  Tom knows the river and like his ances­tor, he’s saved a fair num­ber from acci­dents at the falls.

Tom can read the river and while it is good for the town when it saves peo­ple, it puts him at odds with them when it comes to the pow­er­house which will deplete the river and all the bounty it offers.

Tom and Bess are faced with not only the every­day life strug­gles of mak­ing ends meet and main­tain­ing their lifestyle (which is not grand in any sense), but with the onset of war in addi­tion to every­thing else.  Tom goes off to war and Bess is left to raise their son while work­ing as a dressmaker.

I can­not con­tinue too much with the story with­out drop­ping spoil­ers, but in the end, this story while sad at times, has you hop­ing for the best for these char­ac­ters.  Will Tom make it home from the War?  What hap­pens with the pow­er­house? The Nia­gara? Buchanan reveals all with an abil­ity to make you want to cry and yet even in those hard times, the char­ac­ters grow and change in a way you can respect.

If you love his­tor­i­cal fic­tion or even a good love story, this is truly a won­der­ful read and well worth curl­ing up with it for a weekend.

But You Don’t Have to Take My Word For It:

The Bur­ton Review

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