The First Time She Fell

by Caleb Ludwick

Sale!
  • The First Time She Fell
  • Price: $19.00 $15.20
  • Hardcover, 5.5x8.5, 156 pages
  • ISBN 10: 1-936196-25-5
  • ISBN 13: 978-1-936196-25-8
  • October 2013

In Chattanooga, Tennessee, a small city of the new American South, we find an unexpected world of haves and have nots, families and outsiders, old hatreds and first loves that unfold in eight imaginatively rendered stories. As these characters rush into circumstances where everything changes, we watch them make bad choices for good reasons, or good choices for bad reasons – with aftershocks that ripple through the lives of everyone around them.

Stark and funny, brutal and tender, Ludwick’s stories are rooted in hope, in human kindness, and an ability to find beauty everywhere. Originally the inspiration for an award-winning design collaboration, The First Time She Fell emerges on its own as an ambitious debut collection that is, in the words of one character, “as beautiful as the world is sharp as the world is sweet.”

Praise for The First Time She Fell

Winner of a PRINT magazine award for most creative project in the Southeast (1st edition).

“Ludwick’s stories don’t feel limited by an author’s hand, but open to change and consequence and the whims of the universe. In other words, they feel real. And in their plumbing the depths of the human soul – the child’s soul, the priest’s, the criminal’s – they remind us that ‘at heart, anyone is capable of anything.’ The First Time She Fell is surefooted and quietly sublime.”
– Rebecca Makkai, author of The Hundred-Year House and The Borrower

“Poignant meditations on the economic, religious and ethnic diversity that is the New South… even at their most brutal, these stories deliver beauty and promise through Ludwick’s sharp yet graceful prose and keen compassion for his characters.” – Sybil Baker, author of Into this World

“The real heavy hitters are Ludwick’s skillfully conceived characters and their lingering voices. You find yourself imagining the character’s moment of redemption… You hope. You cross your fingers.” – the Mountain Mirror

Watch the Book Trailer

The First Time She Fell | Book Trailer from Juncture on Vimeo.

$19.00 $15.20

The C&R Press Mailing List

About the Author

Caleb Ludwick

  Caleb Ludwick For the past decade, Caleb Ludwick has worked as a senior brand writer with design agencies around the country, serving clients in the US, UK, Europe and Central America. His work has been honored by the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the International Interior Design Association, New York Type Director’s Club, One Show, PRINT, Meacham Writers’ Workshop, School of Southern Literature, Yale Writers’ Conference, the Lyndhurst Foundation, and with permanent inclusion in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Design Museum. He holds a MA in theology from a seminary that prefers to remain nameless, and a MA in literature from the Universite d’Orleans, France and the University of Nottingham, UK. He lives with his wife and three daughters in the mountains outside of Chattanooga, TN.

Author photo by Dotson Studios

C&R Fiction Titles

Related Products