Resurrecting Rain by Patricia Averbach is another story from the current day. I have taken quite a few of the this year. I thank TLC Book Tours for sending me a copy at no charge for my honest review.
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About Resurrecting Rain:
Deena’s house is being auctioned off at sheriff’s sale and her marriage is falling apart. As her carefully constructed life unravels, her thoughts return to the New Moon Commune outside Santa Fe where she was born, and to Rain, the lesbian mother she had abandoned at fourteen. No one, not even her husband and children, know about New Moon or that she sat Shiva for Rain in exchange for living in her Orthodox grandmother’s house in an upscale suburb of Cleveland. Deena’s story unfolds with empathy and wit as a cascade of disasters leaves this middle aged librarian unmoored from her home and family, penniless and alone on the streets of Sarasota, Florida. The novel is populated with deftly drawn characters full of their own secrets and surprises–from Deena’s blue haired freegan daughter who refuses to tell her parents where she lives, to the octogenarian TV writer who believes that crows are the reincarnated souls of Jews lost in the Holocaust. Deena loses her house, but will she find a home? Maybe the crows know.
Resurrecting Rain explores the unanticipated consequences of the choices that we make, the bonds and boundaries of love and the cost of our infatuation with materialism. At its heart the novel is a tale of loss and redemption, a reevaluation of our material culture and an appreciation for the blessing of friends and family. It demonstrates that sometimes you have to lose everything before you find yourself.
About the Author:
A Cleveland native, Patricia Averbach is the former director of the Chautauqua Writers’ Center in Chautauqua, New York. Her debut novel, Painting Bridges ( Bottom Dog Press in 2013) set in a small town in Western New York in 1976, is a story of grief and redemption. Michelle Ross, critic for the Plain Dealer, described Painting Bridges as an “introspective, intelligent and moving novel.”
Her second novel, Resurrecting Rain, won a Royal Palm Literary Award from the Florida Writers Association and was a semi-finalist for a Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award under the title New Moon Rising.
My Opinion:
I will be honest here. I received Resurrecting Rain, read the synopsis and couldn’t remember agreeing to review it. That happens – I read and review a lot of books. Then I couldn’t remember why I had decided to read it. That happens sometimes too. It is often six months from the time I accept a book to the time I read a book. It is way out of my reading wheelhouse and I was OK, let’s get reading and see what I have gotten myself into. And boy was I glad that I was reading this book!
Resurrecting Rain starts with a marriage starting to crack due to a husband’s betrayal. What follows is the slow disintigration of the family unit and a journey for each family member to find who they are and where they belong in this world.
The story pulls you in from the first pages as the facade that Deena had created around her beautiful house and perfect children falls when her husband goes against her wishes and advice to make an investment and they lose everything. They are forced into a tiny apartment and soon the cracks really start to show. It devolves even further when she experiences problems at work and soon the four members of the family are living very separate lives. The book is mostly about Deena’s journey to find out exactly who she is, where she came from and getting back to where she belongs.
I picked it up and I didn’t put it down until I was done. The characters are so well drawn – you don’t really love any of them, well except for one but I don’t want to spoil things. And you don’t really hate any of them, although you come close with the husband. This goes to show how just plain human they all are. Ms. Averbach is the kind of writer that spins magic. To take topics like a marriage breaking up, homelessness and acts of violence and make them so compelling and ultimately uplifting is a skill. I will read this one again as there is more for me to glean.
Rating:
5
