Finalist for 2019 International Book Awards for Literary Fiction

)Lovers Fall Back to Earth is a human drama about three sisters, the men they marry, and the repercussions in their lives when disaster strikes. The sisters fall in love while they are at university and the three couples become part of a group of students who are shaped by the ideas of the sixties and who meet to discuss ideas of liberty, politics, and environmentalism. Young and idealistic revolutionaries, they believe they can change the world, as they hold forth in the smoking room where they spout philosophies about personal freedom. They form strong relationships and marry but, inevitably, each couple chooses a different life style. Amelia and Reuben live as hippies, Esther and George choose a middle-class upward-mobility life, Helen and Benjamin are the academics. When an unexpected tragedy shatters the lives of all three couples, they are forced to build their lives anew, questioning the idealism of their youth as they learn to deal with the impact of their actions on those they love.

Cecelia Frey was born in Northern Alberta, grew up in Edmonton and now lives in Calgary. Her short stories and poetry have been published in dozens of literary journals and anthologies as well as being broadcast on CBC radio and performed on the Women’s Television Network. Her last novel, A Raw Mix of Carelessness and Longing, was shortlisted for the 2009 Writers Guild of Alberta Fiction Award and she is a three-time recipient of the WGA Short Fiction Award. She has also won awards for play writing. Cecelia is the author of poetry collections: the least you can do is sing; Songs Like White Apples Tasted; And Still I Hear Her Singing; Reckless Women; and Under Nose Hill; short story collections: The Nefertiti Look; The Love Song of Romeo Paquette; and Salamander Moon; and novels: Breakaway; The Prisoner of Cage Farm; A Fine Mischief and A Raw Mix of Carelessness and Longing. Her play, The Dinosaur Connection, was produced on CBC’s Vanishing Point series.

Cecelia Frey's profile page

"This book is about unpacking clichés, all that has been hoarded over the years. Frey pries beneath the surface, holding a formidable dexterity with the light and dark features of story. Her characters surface as those who make you laugh, and those who tick you off."
br&mdashFreeFall Magazine

"Cecelia Frey knows the flower children. Then, and now. Where did they go with their love beads and messages of universal belonging and peace and love? Twenty years have passed since three sisters and the three men with whom their lives would mesh have moved on from the campus Cave. So long ago that they smoked and drinked and philosophized in that campus club so frequently that a table was named after them. They were the Philosophers Circle.

Cecelia Frey is adept at delivering both the spoken and the unspoken memories of her characters; the melancholy, the sadness, the bitterness over having arrived where they are now--a place where they have "failed to make any coherent sense of their lives." Known for her skill in delivering dialogue, the conversations that run a gamut of emotion ring with authenticity. These well-drawn characters evoke compassion, frustration, outrage, and sorrow. As Frey takes us back and forth in their lives with skilful storytelling, it is clear that she feels the same affection and apprehension over the fates that befall them. This is a compelling tale of entangled lives and human foible. "
--Betty Jane Hegerat, author of The Boy

"Lovers Fall Back to Earth" gives the reader rare insight into how grief, guilt, and trauma impact a network of siblings and partners. The effect on each character is often unexpected but also entirely believable. Cecilia Frey's beautiful novel is, in turn, painful, entertaining, and tender."
--Paul Butler, author of The Widow's Fire

"From the very first paragraph through to the novel's close, author Cecelia Frey will draw you in to this story of three close, but temperamentally different, sisters, their divergent paths and the impact of a tragedy. Themes of love and marriage, aspirations met and unmet, self-realization, loss, infidelity, forgiveness and redemption, are not new. But it is Frey's exploration of character that breathes new life into those narratives. With clarity, surety and a straight-forward style, she drives the story-line quickly forward, while, in seeming counterpoint, skilfully allowing herself the slower pace, the time--and the reader the luxury-- to savour the qualities unique to each character. She, and we, relish the details that give them depth and roundness; reveal their goodness as well as their weaknesses, inconsistencies, reflections, self-doubts; in short, what makes them human, their relationships and struggles believable. We recognize ourselves. It is that gift of characterization that makes this novel an outstanding, compelling read."
--Rhoda Rabinowitz Green, author of Aspects of Nature and Moon Over Mandalay