cover image After We Fall

After We Fall

Emma Kavanagh. Sourcebooks Landmark, $14.99 trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-1-4926-0919-3

Flight attendant Cecilia Williams, one of four troubled people whose lives intersect in Kavanagh’s solid debut, has just abandoned her police detective husband, Tom Allison, and their two-year-old son, Ben, when bad weather causes the plane she’s on to crash soon after takeoff from Cardiff, Wales, into a mountain village. Cecilia is one of the few survivors. Meanwhile, Tom investigates the murder of Libby Hanover, retired police superintendent Jim Hanover’s grown daughter, and Freya, the young daughter of the pilot who died in the crash, tries to assuage the grief of her mother and grandparents. Kavanagh heightens the suspense by shifting among multiple points of view, though the anguish Cecilia goes through in reevaluating her life will strike some readers as melodramatic. Packed with high emotion, this novel about bad choices and vexed relationships reveals a born storyteller with room to grow. Agent: Camilla Wray, Darley Anderson Literary Agency (U.K.). (June)