J.C. Adams

Liam O’Connor doesn’t know what hit him. It’s 1992, and his life’s sideways. Six years since his debut novel became a bestseller, five since he bailed New York for small town Wisconsin, he has yet to produce a follow-up. At forty-three, alone and befuddled, he hides his neuroses and insecurities behind a blustery façade that fools no one. Commitment-averse, he’s dated and left every divorcée in town. Then he meets Sylvia—a beer-loving, tattooed railroad worker, and she seems the perfect antidote. So why not take a flyer on her? He met her at a nice dinner party. What could possibly go wrong?

At 45, Liam O’Connor’s in the family way. A man befuddled by women and afraid of commitment, he seems an unlikely candidate for his first real relationship, and even more unlikely as a first-time father—but here he is. You might say it’s Liam’s rebirth moment, but he’s breech. Falls the Apple—The Family O’Connor is a twenty-year saga, a wild ride punctuated by Liam’s relationship with that baby aptly named Maeve (“she who intoxicates” or “she who rules”), as she grows into a precocious, headstrong young woman who stands toe to toe with her father and gives as good as she gets.

But Falls the Apple is far more than just a father-daughter tale. It plumbs the depths of family identity, including the tug and pull of biological versus chosen relationships, and the intersection of business and friendship in day-to-day life and in the crises that inevitably interrupt our lives.