Following the twists of history during the first half of the twentieth century, Fall On Your Knees, takes the reader from Cape Breton Island, to the battlefields of World War I, to the New York jazz scene and finally into the lives of the Piper family. This multifaceted narrative contains many measures entrenched by love, pain, death, joy, triumph, as well as deeply buried family secrets. In the center of the plot there is the nature of family love, beginning with the Piper sisters who depend on one another for personal survival. Frances, Macdonald's heroine, can be compared as a boyish character, possessing a personality of an immature and obnoxious child. On the other hand, despite how she may behave on the surface, she is frightened of not being loved, and as a result craves attention from everybody close to her. Throughout the novel she expresses this need for love through her bad behavior, though later discovers her true identity through the many negative events which occur throughout the novel. Ann-Marie Macdonald, the author of Fall On Your Knees, stimulates the reader into a world of tragedy, indisposed motherhood, incest and prostitution by giving existence to a neglected and misguided girl in search for her inconspicuous identity. .
Tragedy is a reoccurring incident that attributes to Frances" character. Her eldest sister Kathleen died while giving birth to twins, then one of the twins died shortly after his birth, and finally Frances" mother (Materia) passed away afterwards. Frances, who was still a young girl and unconfident of many things, did not quite know how to respond to this vast loss. This large bereavement caused Frances to realize her life would be full .
of despair, and as a result she was able to find her identity throughout the period of coping. .
"But what could be worse than this outrageous hilarity at her mothers funeral which comes two days after her sisters funeral which came two days after all the baptisms and the death of - oh no, tears of laughter are darkening her white cloves her father's sympathetic hand, her sister's offer of a sodden hanky.