JUST FALL is my current “cross-the-street” book. That’s what I call a novel that I’m recommending to everyone whose paths I cross, to the extent that people cross the street when they see me coming. Author Nina Sadowsky, who has been associated in varying capacities --- from screenwriter to executive producer --- with a number of films, turns her multi-talented hand to novel writing with an impressive and memorable result.

There are no chapters as such in JUST FALL. The narrative is divided into religiously alternating sections of “Now” and “Then,” until the end, when we are confronted with “Next.” That “Next” is ironic, since the reader honestly doesn’t know what is going to happen from one page to the next.

"The deeper one gets into JUST FALL, the more it becomes similar to a quantum physics textbook, but only in the sense that it becomes extremely clear that the more we know, the less we know."

What unfolds here is the relationship between Ellie Larrabee and Rob Beauman. The two of them together seemingly comprise a storybook couple; that is true only if the storybook is written by the Brothers Grimm. Rob has a rough and difficult past, one that is only “past” in the sense that William Faulkner so brilliantly described in REQUIEM FOR A NUN. His past rears its head very dramatically, immediately after the couple’s wedding ceremony, and turns their honeymoon on the island of St. Lucia into a nightmare full of double crosses, subterfuge, kidnapping and murder. Their only salvation may be Lucien, a good and honest cop who is dealing with a series of inexplicable child abductions but who suddenly gets tangled in the net in which Rob was snared over a decade before.

Ellie finds that what was supposed to be the best day of her life has turned into a never-ending nightmare. She has discovered, on her wedding day, that the man she thought was her soulmate is someone else entirely. She understandably finds herself emotionally swinging from love to hate and back again, as far as Rob is concerned. As the book unfolds, though, it slowly becomes clear that Ellie has a couple of secrets of her own that she has been keeping in reserve. As is frequently said in Al-Anon meetings (although in a different context), “(a) ‘2’ doesn’t marry a ‘10.’” By the end, it appears that Ellie and Rob may have some things in common after all, but not what they thought they were.

We don’t learn the meaning of the title until we are well into the final third of the book. That is just one of the surprises that Sadowsky sprinkles throughout this fine work. Her creative abilities, honed in the film industry, are on display here. She knows just how much to give the reader, and when, in this fish-out-of-water story where the fish isn’t so much a goldfish as a barracuda. The deeper one gets into JUST FALL, the more it becomes similar to a quantum physics textbook, but only in the sense that it becomes extremely clear that the more we know, the less we know. This is especially evident at the very end of the tale, which will leave you wanting more. Your wish, it appears, will be granted.