Friday First Pages: THE DAY THE FALLS STOOD STILL

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First Pages Fridays offers a taste of an author's work—from books long on the shelves to works-in-progress, because while you can't judge a book by the cover, you can tell plenty from the first pages.

"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

The Day the Falls Stood Still pulls us into the maelstrom of Niagara Falls at the time when rivermen drew daredevils from the brink, the promise of hydroelectric power wooed a nation and only a few dared question our relationship with the mighty river.

The Day The Falls Stood Still

by Cathy Marie Buchanan

The stone walls of Loretto Academy are so thick I can sit curled up on a window sill, 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 colour 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.

There is a light rap on my door and then Sister Ignatius, who teaches us English Literature, steps into my room.  I hop down from the window sill, wondering why she has come with a stack of books and just minutes before all of us at the academy are due downstairs for the commencement of the class of 1915.   "For you, Bess," she says, handing the books over to me.  "They're old."  But the stack includes The Hound of the Baskervilles and The House of Mirth, books which are not old at all.  There are others ─ Wuthering Heights, Tale of Two Cities, Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Last of the Mohicans and The Picture of Dorian Grey -  that were written years earlier, but the copies in my arms are new.  As I mutter a thank you, she touches my cheek, and then she is back though the door and in the corridor saying, "Fifteen minutes until you're expected in the dining hall."

For a moment I cling to the possibility that I will return to the academy in the fall for my final year.  But Sister Ignatius is yet another example of the sisters having gone soft and sentimental, the way people tend to when they are saying goodbye.  It began with Sisters Bede and Leocrita, who teach Composition and Christian Doctrine, returning a pair of examinations I had not sufficiently prepared for, preoccupied as I was with Father's whereabouts.  The comments penciled into the margins were bewildering.  An interesting departure from your usual style.  An original idea. Where were the stern words reprimanding sloppiness and poorly-formulated logic I had expected to find?

I mean to get through the evening dry-eyed and respectable and at the outset all goes well enough.  I file into the dining hall with the rest of the Juniors, all of us in our white concert dresses, and take my place on the low platform at the front of the room.  I stand there, mouthing the words to "The Last Rose of Summer", as the twelve Seniors who will form the evening's graduating class make their way up the centre aisle.

We had been told that with the war the decorations would be less elaborate than in other years.  Still the platform is lined with potted palms and ferns moved from elsewhere in the academy and there are large vases of roses and peonies cut from the Sister Leocrita's garden at either end.  My gaze sweeps the rows of seated parents, moving from powdered nose to clean-shaven face, and finally comes to rest on a familiar navy hat trimmed with silk and an egret.  Mother is impeccably dressed, though somewhat less fashionably than usual.  Her skirt meets her boots rather than ending a few inches above the ankle as do the more daring styles.  And her collar is high, stiffly starched.  She faces straight ahead, her spine as straight as anyone's in the room, yet she twists the programme in her hands.  She is sitting beside the aisle and, though the house is nearly full, the three seats next to hers remain unoccupied.  Surely one is saved for Father.

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CATHY MARIE BUCHANAN's debut novel, The Day the Falls Stood Still, is a Barnes & Noble Recommends Selection, a Barnes & Noble Best of 2009 book, an American Booksellers Association IndieNext pick, and a New York Times bestseller. Her stories have appeared in many of Canada's most respected literary journals. She holds a BSc (Honours Biochemistry) and an MBA from the University of Western Ontario and is a founding member of conservation organization Friends of Niagara Falls. Born and raised in Niagara Falls, Ontario, she now resides in Toronto.

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