When attorney Emma Maddison exits the courtroom feeling high on her biggest high-powered success
to date, it's with a nagging sense of foreboding that she takes an unexpected call from her hometown
- a place full of memories and people who were her friends, family, and foundation in life.
She simply walked away from it all, without ever looking back, in pursuit of a dream sixteen years
ago. This one phone call becomes the precipice on which her life balances, and ultimately she will have to decide which way to fall.
Emma’s father has suffered a heart attack and
is in emergency wavering between life and death. As she tangles with the thoughts and emotions unexpectedly released with this turn of events, the heartily warm welcome she receives
is her undoing. Home…is always where the heart is. For Emma, the little reminders of love and friendship
are truly moving and appreciated while she tends to the care and needs of her father.
Her reunion with Michael, an old love, makes her thoughts begin to stray from Boston and more toward home.
With a career she's worked so hard and so long to succeed at, a boss and co-workers constantly reminding her of the mountain of responsibilities she has back at work, and the impenetrable barrier that
keeps love and certain realizations from making their home within her, Emma
stands at a crossroads. Through prayer, love, friendship, and acceptance, Emma must choose the course for her life and the people who
will fill it.
Coppernoll succeeds in producing a fairly good plot for A Beautiful Fall,
but there were lulls in the story that could have used a little more oomph to keep attention
alive. The characters are likeable enough, their development the obvious point to a major part of the writing. However, unlike Jan Karon-type novels that are Christian-based but enjoyable to readers of all religious beliefs
(or not), Coppernoll’s novel is pretty much specifically a Christian read.
Heavy stress is placed on prayer, the importance of community, love, forgiveness, and living life in the now and not regretting what could have been, etc., but the presentation
is not as moving as one would hope.