I feel bad. I really do. I’m sure it took Rae Meadows years to write this book. Then it took the editing. Draft after draft. Then to the publisher, through acquisitions, revisions and finally through the printing, the delivery and subsequent launch. It probably took at least a year, maybe eighteen months, and this doesn’t include the time it took to actually write the novel. I’m guessing on all these things, but I feel bad because it only took me about two hours to read this wonderful book.
I was sucked in. Right from the first page. The Dust Bowl. Family, the land, depravity, dreams and characters who you truly feel for. For me personally it was Fred who made the entire thing. The little bugger. I know little of the Dust Bowl, but the more I read the more I wanted to know. “I Will Send Rain” could be foreshadowing of a world we once knew but have forgotten. How quickly things can change.
This is such a heartbreaking story, but lined with small but powerful details of the human experience. We are all fractured creatures yet through the gesture of everyday we find a way to make it, to survive. Get it, read it.