I Will Send Rain

A Novel

By: Rae Meadows

Narrated by: Emily Sutton-Smith

Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

From award-winning author Rae Meadows comes a luminous, tenderly rendered novel of a woman fighting for her family's survival in the early years of the Dust Bowl.

Annie Bell can't escape the dust. It's in her hair, covering the windowsills, coating the animals in the barn, and in the corners of her children's dry, cracked lips. It's 1934, and the Bell farm in Mulehead, Oklahoma, is struggling as the earliest storms of the Dust Bowl descend. The wheat harvests are drying out, and people are packing up their belongings as storms lay waste to the Great Plains.

As the Bells wait for the rains to come, Annie and each member of her family are pulled in different directions. Annie's fragile young son, Fred, suffers from dust pneumonia; her headstrong daughter, Birdie, flush with first love, is choosing a dangerous path out of Mulehead; and Samuel, Annie's husband, is plagued by disturbing dreams of rain. As Annie, desperate for an escape of her own, flirts with the affections of an unlikely admirer, she must choose who she is going to become.

With her warm storytelling and beautiful prose, Rae Meadows brings to life an unforgettable family that faces hardship with rare grit and determination. Rich in detail and epic in scope, I Will Send Rain is a powerful novel of upheaval and resilience, filled with hope, morality, and love.

©2016 Rae Meadows (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Moving

What does Emily Sutton-Smith bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I loved Emily Sutton-Smith's narration -- and it was best when she was in character. I am surprised to say that! I don't usually care much for "voices," but she has the perfect timbre for both male and female characters, young or old; natural and quite believable. I almost felt that her regular reading voice was too perfect and precise.

Amy Bell from Cimarron County

I grew up in Cimarron County. My family name is Bell. My grandmother used to tell us about living during the dustbowl. So obviously I had to read this book. I LOVED IT!

I especially liked how the author switched from one character's point of view to another. It made the story very rich.

slow to start

This book was hard to get into but hang in there. Is a
Great story.

We've seen pictures of the Dust Bowl

But seldom have we heard stories about the lives of families, individuals, or towns. The whole story rang with the truth about how hard it must have been.

Excellent reader also.

Listening to audiobooks is becoming a very expensive habit. Grin.

A dusting

These characters are believable and yet you get so many glimpses of going deeper but not quite getting there. Our book club chose this book but I'm not sure there is much to talk about? The story is good and at the same time not as gritty as it could have been from the history I read on the terrible dust storms and plight of the area. Because I felt it was to soft on a real life event I took a star off. I grew up on farms, had grasshopper destroy all our fields it was horrid. The story lacks the conviction of real life in too many places for me.

While I really disliked this book...

...I'm guessing a lot of people will really enjoy it.

Can't fault the writing or character development. Plot...meh.

Historically: Knowing a fair bit about the Dust Bowl era, there wasn't anything new there for me.

Ultimately, though, it was the fact that it was just so relentlessly depressing, and I'm just not in the mood for "in this book, almost nothing good happens" these days.

Not what I expected

This story is very depressing. I stopped reading after 100 pages. The narrator is fantastic.