Right As Rain - Hardcover

Marshall, Bev

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345468414 ISBN 13: 9780345468413

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2004

Synopsis

Placed side-by-side by their white employers, cook Tee Wee and housekeeper Icey forge a fractious bond based in their shared servitude and their equally painful pasts, a friendship that eventually serves to hold together the rural southern farm where they work. By the author of Walking Through Shadows.

About this title

Review:

"An old-fashioned Southern family saga and a page-turner, a wonderful blend of comedy and tragedy. This novel takes on, without fear, the complex truths and ironies that make up black-on-white life in the deep South. Bev Marshall knows her land and her people. These voices ring true."
--BRAD WATSON, author of The Heaven of Mercury

"Bev Marshall has managed the rare feat of mixing history and fiction, memory and magic, and she has accomplished the all but impossible task of writing about race in a way that is utterly generous, without censure, apology, or fear. . . . After this one book, she's one of my favorite writers. I look forward to reading everything she's written and is going to write. It's not often that a writer's staying power is so evident so quickly."
--KAYE GIBBONS, author of Ellen Foster and Divining Women

"One of those quietly absorbing stories that draws the reader right in and never lets go . . . Like all the best Southern writers, Marshall explores those time-tested ideas of faith, race, place, and family and makes them her own. But the real grace-and glory-of Right as Rain is that it is pitch perfect. Reading this novel is like sitting on a porch in a summer breeze listening to an old friend tell you a story you know well but can't wait to hear again."
-New Orleans Times Picayune

"Right as Rain is a saga in the best sense of the word. . . . Marshall has put her heart and soul on the page for the reader and the result is a novel so haunting and beautiful that it will stay with me always. This book firmly establishes Bev Marshall as one of our most amazing and vivid American voices."
--SILAS HOUSE, author of A Parchment of Leaves and Clay's Quilt

"Fans of Lee Smith, Ellen Gilchrist, and Fannie Flagg will likely find Marshall's latest as a welcome addition to the collection of fine Southern fiction."
-The Sun Herald (Biloxi, MS)

"Marshall is an extraordinary storyteller. . . . [Her] greatest triumph is her ability to convey the humanity of all her characters."
-Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"I marvel at the wisdom tucked away inside these pages, at the generosity and artistic grace on display here. This is a fine, fine book."
--STEVE YARBROUGH, author of Prisoners of War and The Oxygen Man

"Bev Marshall has not so much written a novel as she has drawn back the curtain on a South-facing window, a view of Mississippi fifty years ago, of forty and thirty years ago. . . . They are not so much characters as people we have known; their stories not so much witnessed as shared. The shifting points of view--female and male, black and white--never shift away from honesty and authenticity."
--SONNY BREWER, editor, Stories from the Blue Moon Café anthology

"A brilliantly crafted page-turner, Right as Rain spins a cinematic tale of familial love, everlasting friendship, and secret desire that will entrench you in the lives of its characters so completely you will never want it to end."
--SUZANNE KINGSBURY, author of The Summer Fletcher Greel Loved Me and The Gospel According to Gracey

About the Author:

Bev Marshall is the critically acclaimed author of Walking Through Shadows. A native of McComb, Mississippi, she lived as a nomadic military wife for many years. Marshall returned to her Southern roots and taught English at Southeastern Louisiana University. She now lives in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, with her husband.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0345468414
• ISBN 13: 9780345468413
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400