The Fall-Down Effect by Liz Johnston

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, 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.

Praise for The Fall-Down Effect

“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

“The Fall-Down Effect had me from page one—a brave and beautiful novel about desperate measures, the bonds we break and the ones that miraculously endure.” —Alissa York, author of Far Cry

Press Coverage

2026 Spring Preview: Fiction —Quill & Quire

Most Anticipated: Our Spring 2026 Fiction Preview —49th Shelf

MER Bookshelf – January 2026 —MER Journal

The Fall-Down Effect: An excerpt of the new novel by Liz Johnston —Wild Roof Journal’s Substack

Eight New Novels We Can’t Wait to Read in 2026 —The Grind

43 Canadian fiction books coming out in April to June we’re excited to read —CBC Books

Afterword: Liz Johnston’s The Fall-Down Effect —All Lit Up

10 Amazing Books to Add to Your 2026 Reading Challenge —Michael Schmidt, River Street Writing

Liz Johnston: Read lit mags to see where writing fits in the literary ecosystem —On Creative Writing

Busy Reading: The Fall-Down Effect‘s Fractured Family and Fractured Forests —Emmerson Jull, The Ontarian

“While reading Liz Johnston’s The Fall-Down Effect, I was quickly pulled in by the propulsive tension she creates between a mother and daughter’s competing responsibilities to family and activism across two different time periods. For fans of Michael Christie’s Greenwood, but also think cli-fi Little Women.” —Martha Sharpe, Flying Books

Open Book Interviews Liz Johnston About Her Exciting Debut Novel, The Fall-Down Effect —Open Book