The Man Who Rained

Book excerpt: From the author of the stunning debut novel The Girl with Glass Feet comes another magical story of love, discovery, and nature When Elsa's father is killed in a tornado, all she wants is to escape—from New York, her job, her boyfriend—to somewhere new, anonymous, set apart. For some years she has been haunted by a sight once seen from an airplane: a tiny, isolated settlement called Thunderstown. Thunderstown has received many a pilgrim, and young Elsa becomes its latest, drawn to this weather-ravaged backwater, this place rendered otherworldly by the superstitions of its denizens. In Thunderstown, they say, the weather can come to life, and when Elsa meets Finn Munro, an outcast living in the mountains above the town, she wonders whether she has witnessed just that. For Finn has an incredible secret: he has a thunderstorm inside of him. Not everyone in town wants happiness for Elsa and Finn. As events turn against them, can they weather the tempest—can they survive at all? This work of lyrical, mercurial magic and imagination is a modern-day fable about the elements of love.