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Mother of Rain outstanding

Mother of Rain, about hardscrabble life in the hills of Tennessee in the 1930s and ’40s, is the most intriguing read I’ve experienced in years.

Full disclosure: I consider author Karen Zacharias a “writer friend” among whose attributes is an absolute bulldog tenacity to tell a story she believes needs telling — and tell it well.

I’ve written about her in The Register-Guard; the Hermiston reporter-turned-author also wrote the gut-wrenching non-fiction book, Silence of the Mockingbirds, about the domestic-violence death of a little girl in my hometown of Corvallis, Ore., and After the Flag Has Been Folded, about growing up in the south after her military father’s death in Vietnam. (So committed to the book was Zacharias that, when her newspaper editor refused to let her take a few weeks off to return to the place her father died in Vietnam, she quit and went.)

Mother of Rain is Zacharias’ first foray into fiction. But I found her transition from truth to made-up truth so seamless that her novel never read like anything but a real story.

In that respect, reading Mother of Rain is like watching Tom Hanks in a movie versus, say, Kevin Costner. Regardless of the character he plays, Costner is always Costner, a handsome Hollywood actor. Hanks, on the other hand, is a WWII captain in Normandy or a gay man in Philadelphia or Walt Disney or the captain of a cargo ship being pirated.

Likewise, Zacharias so deftly blends place, people and language that the story engulfs you like a lake-like ocean with a deceptive undertow. It reads with that true-to-place spirit of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

Zacharias is like the sculptor who disciplines herself to use only the clay of her subject’s farm to create the image, her metaphors and similes always shaded with the hills of east Tennessee:

“Wheedin took the news jes like I figured she might—she come apart like a two-dollar suitcase.”

“When the pilot revved up the engine my backside shook with the fervor of a Pentecostal’s tambourine.”

“He was slumped over his coffee, like it was the last bit of warmth from a burn barrel.”

The story is about Maizee, who, as a little girl, witnesses an unspeakable tragedy that convinces her that she’s cursed. She is haunted by voices, images and guilt.

She grows up, marries a good man, has a son, Rain, and clings to a tenuous faith in God. Optimists like me hope her clinging to such strengths will prevent her from sinking deeper into a quicksand of mental illness.

As a reader, I appreciate Zacharias resisting a Disney-esque ending, even if I’m a sucker for them myself. As a writer, I applaud the difficulty of this dive — and the author’s ability to hit the water like an Olympian.

She not only sets her story in a different time, but kneads it with realistic hillbilly dialect and — here comes the double somersault — uses a handful of different narrators to tell the story. (Uh, my first foray into fiction involved a magical cat who could type on a keyboard.)

Zacharias’ ability to pull it off would be remarkable were the author a seasoned vet, much less a fiction newbie. And that ability makes it all the easier to forgive whatever slight shortcomings the book might have, for me a story that ends too abruptly.

Then again, you could argue that that’s more a problem with this particular reader than with that particular author, because Zacharias stays true to the reality of a darkness some of us would like to wish away.

But she is nothing if not a courageous writer, and courage has never been a kin of comfort.

Nor has comfort ever been the measure of a great book, which Mother of Rain is.

Comments


Cathy Schaeffer's sixth-grade class at St. Mary Catholic School

Taylorville, Ill.

 Henley Bliler  

 I would like to fly over the beginning of World War II because I would like to see exactly what happened. 

 

Ruby Broux 

I would like to fly over the Acropolis of Athens. I would fly over there because it is very cool how it is still standing up since the 5th century B.C.E 

Landyn Durbin 

I would like to fly over Egypt whenever the pyramids were being built. I would like to fly over this because it is a mystery of how they were built. 

Bentley Friesland 

American Revolution, to learn why Great Britain wanted war with the U.S. 

 

Renee' Gunning 

I would like to fly over Apollo 11 because I think it would be cool to see the moon landing. 

Drew Kietzman  

I would fly over D-day because it is such an important part of World War II and it is a really cool event. I think it is a cool event because there were so many planes, boats, soldiers and tanks. 

Macie McDowell  

One historical event I would fly over is World War II because I think it would be interesting to see all of the people who fought in the hard time. 

 

Kate Shivers 

I would fly over WW1 because it would be interesting to see what kind of equipment they used and how the countries lined up. 

Liam Stromberg 

Rome to see and picture it all in the past and what it looked like in the past.

Roman Watson  

I would like to fly over when they built the statue of liberty because i want to see the people who built it. 

Matthew Wayman 

I would like to fly over when the Vikings went into battle because the vikings were very strong and powerful humans. 

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