About Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald has won awards and international acclaim as a novelist, playwright and actor. Her two books of fiction are international bestsellers and have been translated into 20 languages. Her debut novel, Fall on Your Knees (1996), won the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book and was an Oprah's Book Club selection, as well as a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her second, The Way the Crow Flies (2003), was also shortlisted for the Giller.

Her play Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) won the Governor General's Award for Drama, the Chalmers Award for Outstanding Play and the Canadian Authors' Association Award for Drama. Her other work for the stage includes Belle Moral: A Natural History, book and lyrics for the musical comedy Anything That Moves, the libretto for the chamber opera Nigredo Hotel and the collectively created The Attic, the Pearls & Three Fine Girls.

A graduate of the acting program of the National Theatre School of Canada, MacDonald has performed in theatres across Canada and in numerous television series and feature films, including Better Than Chocolate, Where the Spirit Lives (for which she won a Gemini) and I've Heard the Mermaids Singing. Recently she starred in Soulpepper Theatre's hit production Top Girls. MacDonald is also the host of CBC-TV's Doc Zone. She lives in Toronto.

About Fall on Your Knees

Ann-Marie MacDonald's first novel, published in 1996, brought her international attention and acclaim for its riveting depiction of a family beset by hidden desires and secrets.

Fall on Your Knees begins in a small mining community in Nova Scotia in the early 1900s and moves to the battlefields of the First World War and then to Harlem during the Jazz Age and the Depression.

It all begins when James elopes with his 13-year-old bride, Materia Mahmoud, whose Lebanese father then casts her out and curses her.

Four sisters are born into the family: beautiful Kathleen, who sings like an angel, self-sacrificing and obedient Mercedes, naughty, rebellious Frances and pure-hearted Lily. There is hope, talent and passion in each of them, but each is affected in her own way by their father's hold on their lives.

Fall on Your Knees has been translated into more than 20 languages and has won numerous awards and accolades, including the Canadian Authors' Association Literary Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book and the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award. It was also a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was selected for Oprah's Book Club in 2002.

Perdita Felicien is defending Fall on Your Knees for Canada Reads.

Playlist

We asked Ann-Marie MacDonald for her choice of music to accompany Fall on Your Knees. Her picks were songs that are actually mentioned in the novel, including the following:

The popular First World War tune Mademoiselle from Armentieres.

Quando M'en Vo, which is Musetta's aria in La Bohème, and Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto.

Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and Für Elise.

The 1940s hit The Anniversary Waltz by Dave Franklin.

The Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin.

The love song Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms by the Irish poet and songwriter Thomas Moore.

The well-known 19th-century folk song Jimmy Crack Corn.

I Love You Truly, a love song from the early 1900s that has been recorded by numerous artists, including Bing Crosby and Connie Francis.

The blues classic 'Tain't Nobody's Business if I Do.

Moonshine Blues by Ma Rainey, who is known as "the mother of the blues."