Defenestrate: The debut to fall for in 2023

A wildly inventive, exhilarating debut narrated by a young woman meditating on her Czech ancestors' 'falling curse', her twin brother's fall from a window, and the malleable, breakable bonds keeping her family from falling apart.

There's a superstition in our family about falling…

Marta's great-great-grandfather Jiří was said to have given a gentle push to the back of a stonemason for having wronged him. The stonemason fell to his death and the family fled Prague for the American Midwest, where they set up a new life.

So begins the story of Marta and her brother Nick, deeply interwoven twins haunted by the mysterious curse that has plagued their family for centuries – one that has doomed them to suffer various types of falls. When Nick tumbles out of a window and ends up seriously injured, Marta must embark on a heartbreaking quest to discover whether or not his fall was intentional, and to stop her family from falling apart…