Rain (Hudson Series #1) » (Unabridged)

"The face of fear I display in my novels is not the pale specter from the sunken grave, nor is it the thing that goes bump in the night," V. C. Andrews once told Douglas E. Winter. "Mine are the deep-seated fears established when we are children, and they never quite go away: the fear of being helpless, the fear of being trapped, the fear of being out of control."

RAIN ALREADY KNOWS HOW HARD LIFE CAN BE. BUT SHE IS ABOUT TO DISCOVER A SHATTERING SECRET FROM THE PAST THAT WILL CHANGE HER FUTURE FOREVER....

Growing up in the ghettos of Washington, D.C., the cards are stacked against a hardworking dreamer like Rain Arnold. Rain has fought to be the best daughter she can: she studies hard and gets good grades; she helps her mother cook and clean. And unlike her defiant younger sister, she avoids the dangers of the city streets as if her life depends on it...and it does. But Rain can't suppress the feeling that she has never truly fit in, that she is a stranger in her own world.

Then one fateful night, Rain overhears something she shouldn't: a heartbreaking revelation from the past, a long-buried secret that is about to change her life in ways she never could have imagined. In the blink of an eye, everything Rain has ever known — the family she has loved and the familiar place she has called home is left behind, and Rain is sent to live with total strangers, the wealthy Hudson family. But just as she did not belong to the troubled world she was raised in, Rain is also out of place in this realm of luxury and privilege. With nowhere to turn, Rain finds an escape in the theater, inside the walls of an exclusive private school. But will it be enough to fulfill her heart's deepest wish — and give her a place to call home?

Library Journal

A tale of tricky emotions from the author of the best-selling Shower of Tears. Rain doesn't feel that she belongs in the Washington, DC, ghetto where she grew up. But when she discovers that her biological mother was a rich white woman and goes to live with her family, she finds the world of wealthy whites pretty hard to take, too. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.