About this item
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.
About the Author
Born in Brussels, Rae Meadows grew up in suburbs of Cleveland and San Diego before attending Stanford University as an Art History major. After years in advertising she wrote her first story, which led to local workshops and eventually the MFA program at the University of Utah. While in Salt Lake City, she answered phones at an escort service, the experience of which inspired her first novel.
Calling Out received the 2006 Utah Book Award for fiction and was named an Entertainment Weekly Must Read, a Book Sense Notable Novel, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and one of the Best Books of 2006 by the Chicago Tribune. Meadows was also named one of five Poets & Writers Debut Writers to Watch. Her second novel, No One Tells Everything, was named a Notable Novel by Poets & Writers and was awarded Honorable Mention in the 2008 Anne Powers Fiction Prize. Mercy Train (released in hardback as Mothers and Daughters) was chosen as a Target Emerging Authors selection and has also been published in Italy, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands, where it was a bestseller.
Her stories have appeared in various literary magazines including the Mississippi Review, Avery Anthology, and Washington Square, and her writing has also appeared online at Nerve, More Magazine, and NPR. She and Alex Darrow co-wrote the screenplay adaptation of Calling Out, optioned by Sound Pictures.
Meadows's fourth novel, I Will Send Rain, is forthcoming, summer 2016, from Henry Holt. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, NY.
