A late night phone call wakes Anna Ellison from sleep. It's the news every parent dreads: her 20-year-old son, August, has fallen from a high window. A powerful, haunting mystery, August Falls tells the story of one woman's struggle to find the truth behind her son's disturbing death. Traveling to the city where the tragic event occurred, Anna must unravel the surprising circumstances of her son's life as she pieces together the reason for its brutal end. The police, concluding that his fatality was a suicide, offer little solace. Attempting to make sense of the loss of her only child and grappling with feelings of guilt for their estrangement, she takes up in August's old apartment. There she meets Jonas, the building's superintendent. Though guarded at first, Jonas is able to form a tentative bond with Anna, a shared longing for love and company in a world that feels strangely desolate. Soon Anna comes to believe that August's demise was not the suicide the jaded police maintain. Determined to know the person her son had become and to uncover the reasons for his fall, Anna begins connecting with the people and places that had been important to him. Her investigation brings her and Jonas to the darker corners of a criminal underworld, where her own life is suddenly in jeopardy. Desperate to understand the violence that claimed her son, Anna searches for a villain. Instead she is introduced to the true nature of human cruelty, and forced to confront it on its own shadowy level.
—Sam Hancock