Rainwater

Starred review from October 26, 2009
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.

October 15, 2009
Megaseller Brown (Smash Cut, 2009, etc.) tries her hand at historical fiction in this slight tale of a Depression-era landlady and her mysterious boarder.

Gilead, Texas—1934, population 5,000, if you don't count the unfortunates inhabiting the shantytown on the city limits—is reeling from the ravages of the crash and the drought, but Ella Barron's boarding house is an enclave of efficient domesticity. With the help of her black maid Margaret, Ella serves three squares a day, handles arduous Monday washdays and keeps an impeccable house for her tenants, a travelling salesman and two spinsters. Her husband skipped town some time ago, and Ella's ten-year-old son Solly is given to strange compulsions and fits that their family physician, Dr. Kincaid, can't diagnose. (Autism-spectrum disorders were then unknown.) Into Ella's regimented life comes Mr. Rainwater, Kincaid's cancer-stricken distant cousin. A prosperous former cotton broker, lanky, handsome Rainwater has decided to spend his final weeks at Ella's boardinghouse. Despite his moribund condition and bouts of severe pain, he is a quixotic social activist. Drought-impoverished cattle farmers are being forced to sell their starving herds to a government program that dispatches the cattle on site, burying the emaciated carcasses in huge ditches. When ranchers allow Shantytown residents to scavenge the ditches for meat, a gang led by town bully Conrad Ellis, whose family meatpacking business is threatened, terrorizes scavengers and ranchers alike. Conrad is only temporarily deterred by the group resistance organized by Rainwater; an eventual showdown between the two is as inevitable as the romance between Ella and Rainwater, who moves her by seeing the savant in Solly where others see only idiocy. Despite Brown's earnest dramatization of the era's horrors, including racial prejudice, lynching, homelessness and hunger, the novel never achieves the pathos she aims for. Her characters are simply too wooden, her Depression too much like a sepia-tinted souvenir photo.

Mediocre, but with the author's track record and a pre-Christmas release, how can it fail?

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

October 15, 2009
An antiques store owner's explanation of why he won't sell his beloved pocket watch to a yuppie couple is the basis of prolific author Brown's ("Smashcut") attempt to entertain readers with a sentimental story just in time for Christmas. Actually, it's a pretty darn good attempt. In 1934 Texas, Ella runs a small boardinghouse while coping with a difficult ten-year-old son. New boarder David Raintree shows a special interest in Ella's son. Raintree is handsome, charming, kind, and sensitive and has some serious health issues of his own. It's a foregone conclusion that he and Ella will become lovers. Some racial overtones are thrown in when a young black minister comes to town, and the story reaches a somber and violent conclusion. VERDICT Predictable but pleasant. Fans of Brown's romantic suspense thrillers will be surprised, as this book resembles a Richard Paul Evans or Emily Grayson novel. But multiple copies will be essential, as author recognition alone will spark interest.Margaret Hanes, Warren Civic Ctr. Lib., MI

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2009
Brown, a master of contemporary romantic suspense, makes a huge genre leap in her latest novel. Radically switching gears, she sets this gentle tale in Depression-era Texas. The historical setting is not her only departure from her tried-and-true formula; this bittersweet morality play also features a hardworking single mother, an autistic child, and a mysterious boarder with a terminal medical condition. The moment Ella Barron agrees to let a room to David Rainwater, her hardscrabble circumstances are irrevocably altered. As the townspeople, farmers, and ranchers struggle both economically and spiritually, a malevolent evil in the form of a menacing town bully threatens their tenuous hold on survival. Though initially suspicious of Mr. Rainwater, Ella falls passionately in love with a man she knows is doomed. When he makes the ultimate sacrifice to save her misunderstood son, he leaves behind a precious final gift and a lasting legacy of grace and compassion. Though Brown fans may initially balk, many will be irresistibly drawn in by this mesmerizing little fable.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)