The Falls Audio Book

The Falls
Author: Joyce Carol Oates
Reader: Anna Fields

Oates captivates us with secrets and passion, grief and love – and healing, in a tale set against a mythic-historic backdrop of Niagara Falls in the mid-20th century. This is a love story gone wrong, and righted, when a family is challenged and changed by outside circumstances. "Fields brings the characters and environment to life, building to a crescendo as powerful as the Falls themselves. (It's awesome to realize that a human voice can make so real the men, women, and children of this saga)."—AudioFile   » Read More

A man climbs over the railings and plunges into Niagara Falls. A newlywed, he has left behind his wife, Ariah Erskine, in the honeymoon suite the morning after their wedding. "The Widow Bride of The Falls," as Ariah comes to be known, begins a relentless, seven-day vigil in the mist, waiting for his body to be found. At her side throughout, confirmed bachelor and pillar of the community Dirk Burnaby is unexpectedly transfixed by the strange, otherworldly gaze of this plain, strange woman, falling in love with her though they barely exchange a word. What follows is their passionate love affair, marriage, and children -- a seemingly perfect existence.

But the tragedy by which their life together began shadows them, damaging their idyll with distrust, greed, and even murder. What unfurls is a drama of parents and their children; of secrets and sins; of lawsuits, murder and eventually redemption.

Set against the mythic historic backdrop of Niagara Falls, Joyce Carol Oates explores the American family in crisis, but also America itself in the mid-twentieth century. The Falls is a love story gone wrong and righted and it alone places Joyce Carol Oates definitively in the company of the great American novelists.

Performed by Anna Fields