She surrendered a child to adoption at seventeen. After decades, wary of truce, she returns to the community that cast her out. Cassandra Soelberg, pregnant at seventeen, was cast out by Mormon patriarchs of her community. Returning to her rural Utah hometown after forty years to care for her senile mother, she meets a young man with an uncanny resemblance to the father of her never-known child. Drawn back into traumatic scenes of young adulthood, she must reconcile with her past in the fiercely beautiful landscapes that shaped her. What Falls Away is a powerful and compassionate novel of family, art, and the raw process of healing.