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Book Reviewed by:Rain Village casts a fabulous spell, pulling us into a world of mystery and possibility where love, friendship and loyalty might either destroy or set one free.
Young Tessa is a diminutive girl, far too small for farm work and the object of ridicule by both her own family and the other children in their isolated Midwestern community. Her father seems to believe in nothing beyond his crops, certainly not education for his misfit daughter. When a mysterious, entrancing librarian comes to town, full of fabulous stories, earthy wisdom and potions for the lovelorn, she takes Tessa under her wing, teaching her to read and to believe in herself—and a whole new magical world of possibilities opens up. But even as she blooms, Tessa’s father begins sexually abusing her. And her mentor carries a dark secret of her own that finally causes her to drown herself. Tessa runs off, following Mary’s footsteps, to join the circus as a trapeze artist, where she marries a loving man and finds a fulfilling life for herself amidst her new circus family. But she remains haunted by her past. And when a stranger from one of Mary’s fabulist tales shows up, Tessa risks everything to follow him to Rain Village, where she might finally discover her mentor’s tragic secret.
A brilliantly evocative debut set in the early part of the 20th century, steeped in emotional turbulence and down-to-earth wisdom, where a young woman must reconcile the inner traumas from her past and learn to live in the present in order to avoid becoming prisoner to her future. Rain Village casts a fabulous spell, pulling us into a world of mystery and possibility where love, friendship and loyalty might either destroy or set one free.
Chapter One
“That tramp! Black-haired Jezebel!”
My mother’s voice screeched into the house, from the yard. Up in my room, I
thought a storm had come until I saw the bare windowpane, the butter-colored sun
streaming in.
I ran down the wooden steps and out the front door, peered through the railings
on the front porch. My father was out by the hedges again, clipping as if some
devil had possessed him, sweat streaming down his face and the shears sprouting
from his giant body like antlers. For two days now all we’d heard were the
sounds of metal slicing against metal, twigs being snapped through and dropping
to the ground. The crops in the field were going to ruin, but my father didn’t
care. Our front yard was already adorned with an elephant, a lion, and a peacock
with a spray of leaves fanning behind it. The hedge he was attacking now was
fourth in the line that hemmed in our yard, blocking it from the country road
that stretched all ...
As a first novel, Rain Village is worthy of note and bodes well for Turgeon in the future. However, it is not without its flaws; the initially invigorating plot seems to peter out into magical realism towards the end which, in the context of a storyline that up until that point had been based more or less in reality, seemed to be an odd direction to veer off into so firmly...continued
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Carolyn Turgeon was born in Michigan grew up in Illinois, Texas, Michigan and
Pennsylvania. She studied English and Italian literature at Penn State and
received a Master's in Comparative Literature from UCLA. Rain Village is
her first novel. She works for a non-profit in New York and lives in Queens.
Carolyn Turgeon discusses Rain Village
A fascinating site about the
circus past and present
Interested in learning the flying trapeze?!
If you liked Rain Village, try these:
by Mari Strachan
Published 2009
The Earth Hums in B Flat is a story of dark family secrets unraveled by the shrewd insight of twelve-year-old Gwenni Morgan, a child with an irrepressible spirit living in a Welsh village that is reluctantly entering the modern age.
by Sara Gruen
Published 2007
An atmospheric, gritty, and compelling novel of star-crossed lovers, set in the circus world circa 1932 illuminated by a wonderful sense of time and place. Winner of the 2007 BookBrowse Award for Most Popular Book.
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