WHAT FALLS AWAY

A woman returns to her rural hometown after nearly 40 years to care for her ailing mother in Anderson’s intimate family saga.

On the cusp of 60, Cassandra Soelberg arrives in the small town of Big Horn, Utah, after a brother she hasn’t spoken to in decades demands she care for their aging mother, Dorothy, who has dementia. Having been forced as a teenager to give up a baby, Cassandra abandoned her roots in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and has been living a fulfilling life as an artist in Minnesota; she dreads her impromptu return to her childhood home. Interspersing flashbacks of Cassandra’s past, Anderson crafts a gorgeously descriptive narrative of aging, religious harm, and childhood trauma, complete with colorful characters who mostly eschew Mormon stereotypes. Through present-day Cassandra, the author offers up a refreshing depiction of older women and doesn't shy away from visible descriptions of age, from graying hair to sagging breasts. The story is also peppered with queer themes and characters, such as Cassandra’s third sibling, Matilda—born Matthew—who is decidedly not cisgender, though their exact identity is left vague. But the story shines brightest in its depiction of female bonding. Cassandra becomes a patchwork of the women who have left their marks on her life: Her grandmother Irene, who cast aside all the restraints of womanhood after the death of her husband; Elodie Linhardt, a worldly college professor who nurtures Cassandra’s artistic ability; even Toni Fuller, the Relief Society president, whom she initially distrusts. These encounters with other women, who rarely linger in the narrative yet become fully fleshed out in the space they’re given, are imbued with Anderson’s lyrical writing, which equally elevates the vast rural landscape, as in this speech from Irene: “Marvelous doesn’t mean perfect….Marvelous calls us to live on the earth, amidst the wreckage, above the mundane hours that tick on toward tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, toward that stifling heaven of a poor prophet’s wet dream.”

A powerful novel that will resonate with anyone who has returned to a place they no longer recognize as home.