Rainwater »

Already a successful romance novelist in the 1980s, Sandra Brown struck gold when she pushed past the category s boundaries to take chances with more intricate plotting, richer characters, and surprising plot twists. Her string of bestsellers feature strong, capable career women in extreme circumstances.

Acclaimed bestselling author Sandra Brown celebrates the spirit and determination that kept our country proud even through the Great Depression, in this moving tale of a bygone generation and a strong young widow who must rise above her circumstances.

Ella Barron is determined that even the ravages of the Dust Bowl will not affect the well-ordered life she has built for herself and her special child, Solly, who lives in a world of his own that even she can’t enter. Aware that he evokes pity and distrust, Ella holds herself aloof from her small community, but her new boarder, David Rainwater, comes into her life— and changes it forever. As economic desperation creates bitter social unrest in the town and surrounding farms, Ella finds herself relying on Mr. Rainwater’s soft-spoken advice and the steely resolve of his convictions. But tensions escalate in the summer heat, until one violent night everything they believe in will be put to the ultimate test.

Sandra Brown’s Rainwater is a poignant, lyrical novel that will speak straight to your heart, a story that bears witness to a powerful truth: love is worth whatever price one must pay for it.

Publishers Weekly

Bestseller Brown (Smash Cut) brings Depression-era Texas to vivid life in this poignant short novel. At the recommendation of Dr. Murdy Kincaid, Ella Barron, a hardworking woman whose husband deserted her, accepts David Rainwater, a relative of the doctor's, as a lodger at the boarding house she runs in the small town of Gilead, Tex. As the local community contends with a government program to shoot livestock and the opposition of racist Conrad Ellis, a greedy meatpacker, to poor families butchering the meat, Ella grows closer to David. Meanwhile, David becomes a special guardian angel to Solly, Ella's nine-year-old autistic son. Dr. Kincaid has gently suggested Ella put Solly in an institution, but she refuses to do so. Brown skillfully charts the progress of Ella and David's quiet romance, while a contemporary frame adds a neat twist to this heartwarming but never cloying historical. (Nov.)