Eleven-year-old Will Cardiel, the hero of Michael Christie's touching debut novel, IF I FALL, IF I DIE, has never left his house, at least not that he can remember. His mother, Diane, was once a celebrated maker of art films, but after a personal crisis and a subsequent mental breakdown, she retreated with her son to her dead brother's house in her hometown of Thunder Bay, a faded port city on the shore of Lake Superior. Will and Diane, the latter of whom suffers from severe agoraphobia and crippling panic attacks, live a circumscribed life in an entirely self-contained world. At the time the book begins, neither has been outside for at least half-a-dozen years, and their home functions both as a prison and a refuge.

Diane's mental illness --- which Will has nicknamed the Black Lagoon --- is exacerbated by her family's history of tragic early deaths, a past that leaves her terrified for her only son: “Who knew better than she how Thunder Bay could reach out and harm a child: the bears and wolves in the woods; the trains, the harbor, and the elevators; the cheap grain alcohol; the highway, the frigid lake, the biblical weather, the hard-eyed brutality of hockey.” She protects Will by keeping him close, but even home is not always safe --- bread knives are stored in locked drawers, changing a light bulb requires the use of a protective wetsuit. Taken on the surface, Diane's efforts to shield Will from harm seem irrational, at times even comical, but in Christie's capable hands, it's clear that they spring from a deep love for her son, albeit a love filtered through the distorting lens of mental illness.

"The novel is at its best...when Christie explores the complex relationship between mothers and their children.... IF I FALL, IF I DIE is a deft, engaging story of the painful but necessary process of letting go and growing up."

Initially, Will is content to live in this strange, hothouse environment, but inevitably the broader world beckons. One day, he cautiously ventures out to his backyard, where he catches a boy named Marcus stealing a garden hose. “There's nothing to be scared of out here,” Marcus announces. Will suspects that Marcus might be right, and he convinces his reluctant mother to enroll him in school. Formal education is a disappointment --- “the building housed and sustained a great oceanic boredom, a boredom so vast it could be tasted” --- but he makes a few friends, including Jonah, a quiet, whip-smart Native boy who takes the naïve Will under his wing, teaching him how to skateboard and patiently showing him how to navigate the confusing outside world.

Meanwhile, the enigmatic Marcus has disappeared after getting entangled with The Butler, a bootlegger who sells a potent alcohol called Neverclear to the down-and-outers who used to work at the city's now-shuttered grain elevators. Will and Jonah explore the seedy underbelly of Thunder Bay in an attempt to discover what happened to their friend. But their boyish determination to unravel the mystery soon has them in over their heads. As her son grows increasingly reckless, Diane, unmoored without his constant presence, sinks deeper into depression.

Christie, a former professional skateboarder, has a lyrical, dynamic writing style that skillfully captures the terrifying, exhilarating process of growing up and learning to be independent. As it does for many boys, for Will this involves testing his physical limits. He crashes his skateboard again and again, and then hides the “rainbows of bruises, and the cursive of scars” from his nervous mother. The portrait of Diane's mental illness is also sensitively rendered. In the hands of a less talented writer, she might come off as a loony, fragile helicopter parent, but Christie allows us into Diane's head, so that we can understand the paralyzing fear that has led her to withdraw from the world.

Less successful is the mystery component of the story. The Butler and his gang are thinly developed and cartoonish, and the portions of the plot that involve a stash of missing grain alcohol never quite come together. A twist involving Diane's brother and her high school boyfriend (one died and the other vanished after a horrible accident at one of Thunder Bay's treacherous grain elevators) can be seen coming from a mile away.

“How was it that to give a child life was to, on the very same day --- even before you could lay eyes upon their slick, purple bodies --- have already given them their death?” Diane wonders at one point. The novel is at its best at these moments, when Christie explores the complex relationship between mothers and their children. Will's small rebellions, especially the way that skateboarding allows him to escape from his mother's watchful eye and overcome his own insecurities, never feel clichéd, but are rather an accurate reflection of the tentative steps one takes on the journey from childhood to adolescence. IF I FALL, IF I DIE is a deft, engaging story of the painful but necessary process of letting go and growing up.