The Fall-Down Effect: An excerpt of the new novel by Liz Johnston
Preview Liz Johnston's new book, an expansive and moving story about family, environmental activism, climate change, secrets, and loss, set in a small mountain town
For today’s post, novelist Liz Johnston has shared an excerpt from her recently published book, The Fall-Down Effect. It’s available for pre-order from Book*hug Press.
To set the scene for the excerpt below, here’s the book’s introductory blurb:
Exploring protest, climate change, and fractured family relationships, Liz Johnston’s eagerly anticipated debut novel, The Fall-Down Effect, asks what we really owe people in our lives when we are fighting for a greater cause.
As a child in the late 1980s, Fern is the wild heart of her tree-hugging family—quick-tempered and yearning to spend every minute in the woods of the small Pacific Northwest logging town where they live. She is also most like her environmental activist mother, Lynn, who chafes against the demands of motherhood and yearns for the protests of her youth. As tensions escalate, Lynn leaves her partner, Tom, and their three children, telling herself she will devote her life more fully to fighting for the earth.
At nineteen, Fern commits her own radical act of protest in the town, which authorities label ecoterrorism. When Fern goes underground, her parents and siblings—responsible grad student Sylvia and budding artist River—struggle to make sense of her actions while also trying to cover up her absence. Fern’s secret proves impossible to keep, and when she becomes a wanted woman, the rest of the family trades blame. Years later, when Lynn takes shelter from a forest fire in the home she left so many years before, the family is forced to confront their regrets during a fraught, baggage-filled reunion.
“This gripping, tender novel by Liz Johnston tells us so much about lifetimes—of individuals and families, forests and ecosystems. Its characters and hopes are seared into my memory. Read this wondrous, extraordinary book and be moved.”
—Madeleine Thien, author of The Book of Records
From chapter 4 of The Fall-Down Effect
Liz Johnston
Sylvia held on to a lungful of air as Mom stopped the car, then manoeuvred it sideways across the dirt road. They hadn’t reached the end of the way that had been cut and plowed up the mountainside, but they were deep in the forest.
“This is our blockade,” Mom announced, pushing the shifter into Park.
A complete hush surrounded them when she switched off the engine. Sylvia didn’t hear the insects or owls or wolves she expected. They sat in silence for a second before another turn of the key brought the vehicle back to a quiet kind of life. Mom switched on the radio and the lights, and Sylvia felt safe again.
“All the better if the battery dies, right?” Mom said. Sylvia’s breath leaked out. “Okay, now, Syl, come on and give me a hand.”
Fern and River stayed in the car, the lights on, the radio playing, while Sylvia went to help Mom get the chains ready. There were piles in the trunk, heavy rusted links that filled the space like gravel or woodchips, spilling into every corner. As Sylvia grabbed and pulled, the metal smudged its penny colour onto her palms and wrists. She tried to keep it away from her clothes, though soon all four of them would have their butts on the damp dirt road.
Once the chains were heaped behind the car, Sylvia, staying in front of the headlights, walked one end toward one of the tall, wide hemlocks that lined the road. Mom meted out lengths of chain, the load getting more unwieldy with each step, then joined Sylvia to help yank the end home to the tree. Here, she grabbed a flashlight from the car for their final few steps. The frail, shaking beam couldn’t stop Sylvia’s heart flapping like a bat in that moment when they passed around the dark side of the tree. Back in the headlights, Sylvia held the links together so Mom could clip them into a loop with a heavy padlock.
Mom returned to the pile of chain. “Here,” she said, thrusting the flashlight into Sylvia’s hand. She spread out the links until she’d found the other end. Then she slid three lengths of plastic pipe along the chain—Mom explained their arms would go inside these—and they did with the second end what they had with the first, walking across the road to an opposite tree. The flashlight beam swung back and forth, up and down, in the eerie glow of the tail lights. They affixed the second padlock and let the remaining lengths drop down into a small pile, clanging in the quiet night.
“You’re my brave girl, right?” Mom’s hand on Sylvia’s shoulder blade was like a malformed, stunted wing.
They got back into the car. Sylvia wished they were done, that they could just turn around now and head down the mountain. She wished she could crawl back under her sheets, shrouded from the nighttime cool, Dad across the hall to keep them safe.
“Are we going to be chained up?” asked Fern, showing no signs of tiredness or fear. Her face was bright, like the headlight beam on the tree trunks.
“Yes, we are.” Mom twisted on her seat so she could lock eyes with each one of them in turn. “I know that might sound scary—”
“No, it doesn’t!” Fern said.
Mom smiled. “—but I promise, I won’t let anyone hurt you. You’re safe. And together we’re going to keep the trees safe too.”
“Will they arrest us?” asked Sylvia.
“No one’s going to arrest a mom and her kids.” It didn’t feel like a true answer.
“I’m hungry,” River whined.
Sylvia caught the look of worry flashing across Mom’s face. A smile moved in swiftly to cover it. “I made us hot chocolate!” she said. She reached into the big bag she’d wedged between the two front seats and produced a thermos the size of her thigh. “Here.” She unscrewed the cap and poured a small amount into it. She blew on it and handed it back to River, telling him to be careful. Sylvia wondered if this hot chocolate was the only provisions they had, but she was too scared to ask. Her stomach grumbled, and Mom laughed. “What’s with you guys? It’s nowhere near breakfast time!”
As they waited for the first sounds of the logging crew, Mom laid out her plan for chaining them all up across the road. She told them not to be scared but warned it wouldn’t be comfortable, being chained with their arms in the tubes. She promised they’d get a huge breakfast when they were done. A breakfast at a restaurant.
But Sylvia couldn’t imagine when they’d ever be done. They were here to block the loggers, and the minute they turned Maeve around and started driving back down the mountain, the loggers would roll right in to start chopping down trees. Mom wouldn’t come all this way and then let that happen, which meant they could never leave. Fern and River were probably so overwhelmed or excited by the idea of being chained up it didn’t occur to them to wonder about any of this.
While River slurped, Mom entertained them—distracted them—with stories of the protests she and Dad had been a part of before they were born. They’d all heard them before, but River and Fern listened eagerly. They seemed awed that their own parents had spent the night in jail when, on an occasion much like this, Mom said, they had blockaded a logging site with a few fellow activists. They giggled wildly when she told them about mooning the arresting officers, a story Dad would have interrupted with a soft, stern Lynn. Then they heard the first of the trucks.
Liz Johnston grew up in Revelstoke, B.C. and now lives and writes in Toronto. Her essays and short stories have appeared in Poets & Writers, The Fiddlehead, The Humber Literary Review, Grain, The Antigonish Review, and The Cardiff Review. Johnston is an editor of Brick, A Literary Journal. The Fall-Down Effect is her debut novel.
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