Sally Nicholls has a rare ability to tell a story from the past by making it both of its time and also accessible for today’s readers. Her characters are always credible people facing up to the great challenges of the day while her details of the period make her settings authentic too. Here, she takes a moment in history when the world was completely changed because of the number of people who died: 1349, the year of the Black Death. Thirteen year old Isobel tells her story, shying away from no details as she describes what she sees as the Plague strikes her family and the whole tight knit community of the Yorkshire village where she lives. Sally Nicholls pulls no punches in her telling of this dramatic story.
A deadly contagion races through England... Isabel and her family have nowhere to run from a disease that has killed half of Europe. When the world she knows and loves ends for ever, her only weapon is courage. The Black Death of 1349 was the deadliest plague in human history. All Fall Down is a powerful and inspiring story of survival in the face of real-life horror.
'I should mention (through gritted teeth) that Nicholls was only 23 when she wrote Ways to Live Forever. Her publishers have very high hopes for her, and on the strength of her debut they seem entirely justified.' Author Mal Peet
'Sally Nicholls has deftly crafted this unforgettable tale of loss, loneliness and finding new ways to look at the world. The story is current and relevant, whilst exploring links with myth, legend and times gone by.' Write Away onSeason of Secrets
Author
About Sally Nicholls
Sally Nicholls grew up in Stockton-on-Tees, and after school, travelled the world, working for a period at a Red Cross hospital in Japan. Sally's first novel, Ways to Live Forever, won the Waterstones Children's Book Prize and she has been shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the Costa Children's Book Award, and the Carnegie Medal, twice.
She lives in Liverpool with her husband and two sons.
