The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan

Publication date/ Length: 2009 / 298 pages

Synopsis (from Publisher’s Weekly): 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.

First Line: “The stone walls of Loretto Academy are so thick I can sit curled up on a windowsill, arms around the knees tucked beneath my chin.”

Review: Imagine if you lived walking distance from Niagara Falls — in the 1900′s!  Imagine not only the romantic presence of one of nature’s greatest wonders, but of the economic possibilities of hydroelectric power during a time of blackouts and war… 

What a happy surprise this novel was!  When it arrived at the library, I had no recollection of why I had requested it (and still don’t — did someone recommend it?  If so, thank you!).  In the Author Notes, Buchanan stated that she “set out to write a novel capturing the wonder I feel while standing at the brink of the falls.” The result is an engrossing history of Niagara Falls in the early 1900′s, a beautiful love story, a treatise on the pull of industry and our need to save our natural resources, and a testament to love, grief and faith.  And, beyond all of those substantial subjects, a great story!

I think readers who enjoyed Laura Ingalls or My Antonia — stories about strong, plucky women who are determined to survive and endure — even during times of sadness, times of deprivation, times of war — would especially embrace Falls.

The heroine is born to a life of privilege, but circumstances both global and personal require her to create a new vision of success and happiness.  In the meantime, she finds enduring love in a mysterious man who knows the river and the falls like no one else.  The responsibilities of family compel him to take a job with the very power company that is siphoning his beloved river.  Buchanan does an excellent job portraying the struggle Tom must resolve within himself as well as Bess’s struggle to support her husband — as well as her family.

I want to include the opening passage of the novel to provide a sense of Buchanan’s prose:

“The stone walls of Loretto Academy are so thick I can sit curled up on a windowsill, arms around the knees tucked beneath my chin. It stands on a bluff not far from the Horseshoe Falls, and because I have been a student long enough to rank a room on the river side, I have only to open a pair of shutters to take in my own private view of the Niagara. Beyond the hedge and gate marking the perimeter of the academy, and the steep descent leading to the wooded shore, I can see the upper river and the falls. Endless water plummets from the brink to the rocks below, like the careless who slip, like the stunters who fail, like the suicidal who leap. I nudge my attention downriver, to clouds of rising mist.

In those clouds I have seen aberrations — flecks of shimmering silver, orbs of color a shade more intense than their surroundings. I have seen them more than once, and I have decided they are prayers, mine and everyone else’s, too.”

All in all, a great vacation read and one that I would recommend to most readers, especially women.  A crowd-pleaser!

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