In the small town of Burnside, the Jerome's family house is destroyed by teenage vandals, who defecate on the floors and push their daughter down the stairs, placing her in a coma.

A childlike stalker calling himself "The Avenger" witnesses the incident and, enraged, begins to track down each culprit.

Mickey "Looney" Stallings, a middle-aged man, frequently refers himself as The Avenger, and desires to punish all deemed evil by him.

In his youth, Mickey assassinated school bully Vaughn Materson with a handgun, and later killed his grandfather to prevent raising suspicion.

[5] In November 2000, parents in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania complained about We all Fall Down because of the violence in several scenes, as well as the description of suicide in the book.

[6] In March 2000, We All Fall Down was removed from the Carver Middle School in Leesburg, Florida, because parents of a sixth-grader who was studying the book were unhappy with the language used in the novel.

The principal also held a faculty meeting to advise staff to look carefully at the books they are assigning to children.