the day the falls stood still

The Day the Falls Stood Still

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

Read More

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 the falls. But when she arrives, nothing is as she 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, Bess’s 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 falls for themselves. As the couple’s 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.

HONORS

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

BARNES & NOBLE RECOMMENDS SELECTION

BARNES & NOBLE BEST BOOK

INDIENEXT PICK

CBC CANADA READS TOP 40 ESSENTIAL CANADIAN NOVELS OF THE DECADE

seal

PRAISE

“What a wordsmith! What a work of depth and breadth! What a world newcomer Cathy Marie Buchanan brings to propulsively glittering and gorgeous life in The Day the Falls Stood Still. Few first novels exhibit the mastery, maturity and majesty of Buchanan’s riveting fictional debut, a heart-wrenching, soul-racking, spell-binding tale interwoven with guts, anguish and glory guaranteed to remain in readers’ minds.”
The Globe and Mai
“A wonderful love story. Buchanan weaves Niagara Falls’ history and her storytelling together masterfully.”
Elle

 

“The Day the Falls Stood Still stands on its own elegant prose and the vibrant voice of its narrator.”
USA Today

 

“This assured Ontario Gothic story deserves to take its place beside the best novels of the First World War.”
National Post

 

“Set against the resounding backdrop of the falls, Cathy Marie Buchanan’s carefully researched, capaciously imagined debut novel entwines the romantic trials of a young couple with the historical drama of the exploitation of the river’s natural resources… a transporting novel that captures both the majesty of nature and the mystery of love.”
Barnes & Noble Recommends Selection citation

 

“Buchanan’s debut novel keeps you in its grip until the final page.”
IndieNext citation

 

“Buchanan combines storytelling with reportage of a legendary riverman creating a story as mesmerizing as staring at the river as it plunges over the falls.”
Publishers Weekly
“An ambitious, sweeping love story. Put it on your late-summer To Do List for sure.”
Buffalo News