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."