Rae Meadows

A Novel

Motherland

A luminous, tenderly rendered novel of a woman fighting for her family's survival in the early years of the Dust Bowl; from the acclaimed and award-winning Rae Meadows. Annie Bell can't escape the dust. It's in her hair, covering the windowsills, coating the animals in the barn, 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. All around them 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, her 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.

I Will Send Rain

Perfection has a cost . . . With transporting prose and meticulous detail, set in an era that remains shockingly relevant today, Winterland tells a story of glory, loss, hope, and determination, and of finding light where none exists. Soviet Union, 1973: There is perhaps no greater honor for a young girl than to be chosen for the famed USSR gymnastics program. When eight-year-old Anya is selected, her family is thrilled. What is left of her family, that is. Years ago, her mother disappeared without a trace, leaving Anya’s father devastated and their lives dark and quiet in the bitter cold of Siberia. Anya’s only confidant is her neighbor, an older woman who survived unspeakable horrors during her ten years imprisoned in a Gulag camp—and who, unbeknownst to Anya, was also her mother’s confidant and might hold the key to her disappearance. As Anya rises through the ranks of competitive gymnastics, and as other girls fall from grace, she soon comes to realize that there is very little margin of error for anyone and so much to lose.

Winterland

«Dove porterete la mia bambina?» chiese Lilibeth alzando la voce. «Come riuscirò a trovarla?»«Avrà una buona casa» rispose la donna con fermezza;ormai era lei a comandare. «Mi creda, è meglio così. Orapotete dirvi addio.»Lilibeth esitò per una frazione di secondo, poi strinse la figlia al petto sottile. «Perdonami» mormorò tra i capelli di Violet. Agli inizi del Novecento intere folle di bambini vivevanodi carità, piccoli furti e altri espedienti per le strade di New York. Nacquero in quegli anni, per iniziativa di un giovane pastore protestante, i cosiddetti Treni degli orfani: decine di migliaia di bambini - abbandonati, senzatetto, vittime della povertà o della negligenza dei genitori - salirono sui treni diretti a ovest, per essere adottati da nuove famiglie cristiane dell'America rurale. Nessuno di loro conosceva la propria destinazione. Ogni possibile provvedimento fu preso affinché le famiglie d'origine non potessero mai più rintracciarli.Un treno pieno di vento prende le mosse da un capitolo drammatico della storia americana per raccontare le vite intrecciate di tre donne indimenticabili. Svelando la trama preziosa che unisce e dà un senso alle generazioni.

Un treno pieno di vento

A rich, luminous novel of three remarkable women connected across a century by a family secret and by the fierce brilliance of their love Samantha’s mother has been dead almost a year when the box arrives on her doorstep. In it, she finds recipe cards, keepsakes, letters—relics of her mother Iris’s past. But as Sam sifts through these family treasures, she uncovers evidence that her grandmother, Violet, had a much more difficult childhood then she could have ever imagined. And Sam, a struggling new mother herself, begins to see her own burdens in a completely different light. Moving from the tempered calm of contemporary Madison, Wisconsin to the seedy underbelly of early twentieth century New York, we come face to face with a haunting piece of America’s past: From 1854 to 1929 orphan trains from New York transported 150,000 to 200,000 destitute, orphaned or abandoned children across the country to find homes on farms in the Midwest. Rae Meadows takes us on our own journey of discovery in Mercy Train (originally published as Mothers & Daughters), an affecting and wonderfully woven novel about three generations of motherhood, family, and the surprising sacrifices we make for the people we love.

Mercy Train

A single, thirty-something copy editor, Grace spends her time alone, viewing New York City life from the position of detached observer, until a local coed is found murdered and a college student from Grace's hometown is arrested for the crime, prompting Grace to strike up an unlikely friendship with the accused killer in order to uncover the mystery behind the killing. Simultaneous.

No One Tells Everything

A smart, sexy debut about a young woman coming to terms with a life she hadn’t planned. After being dumped by her boyfriend, Jane quits her job in New York City, drives west, and lands in Salt Lake City, where she takes a job answering phones at a Mormon-endorsed escort agency. As Jane struggles to find companionship and purpose in her new surroundings, she mothers the escorts and flirts with callers. But the pull of mystery and danger is too great. Boundaries begin to blur, and Jane inches toward a place that would have once been unthinkable: she becomes an escort. Shifting between self-doubt and confidence, uncertainty and adrenaline, Jane descends into the lonely world of sexual commerce and discovers – through her 'bad' behavior – a new sense of self. With convincing, atmospheric prose, Meadows captures both the landscape and politics of Utah, the ironies of America’s heartland, and reminds us that clarity and community can be found in the most unlikely places.

Calling Out

A rich and luminous novel about three generations of women in one family: the love they share, the dreams they refuse to surrender, and the secrets they hold Samantha is lost in the joys of new motherhood—the softness of her eight-month-old daughter's skin, the lovely weight of her child in her arms—but in trading her artistic dreams to care for her child, Sam worries she's lost something of herself. And she is still mourning another loss: her mother, Iris, died just one year ago. When a box of Iris's belongings arrives on Sam's doorstep, she discovers links to pieces of her family history but is puzzled by much of the information the box contains. She learns that her grandmother Violet left New York City as an eleven-year-old girl, traveling by herself to the Midwest in search of a better life. But what was Violet's real reason for leaving? And how could she have made that trip alone at such a tender age? In confronting secrets from her family's past, Sam comes to terms with deep secrets from her own. Moving back and forth in time between the stories of Sam, Violet, and Iris, Mothers and Daughters is the spellbinding tale of three remarkable women connected across a century by the complex wonder of motherhood. This book was later published under the title Mercy Train.

Rae Meadows

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