The Rainy Season - Softcover

Blaylock, James P.

3.69

362 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0441007562 ISBN 13: 9780441007561

Publisher: Ace, 2000

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While grieving over the unexpected death of his young wife, Phil Ainsworth finds his life further shaken by the death of his sister and the arrival of his young niece, Betsy, a child with a special talent to hear the voices of the dead and to see the uncanny forces closing in around the old house he has inherited from his mother. Reprint.

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About the Author:

James P. Blaylock is a creative writing instructor at Chapman University.

From Kirkus Reviews:

More contemporary supernatural horror from the author of Winter Tides (1997), etc. In the hills of southern California, certain wells fill only in rainy years and possess magical properties: children drowned in them cast off their memories as eerie crystals. Photographer Phil Ainsworth lives in a rambling old house beside such a well, and, on the death of his sister, Marianne, he becomes the guardian of Betsy, a nine-year-old, over the objections of Marianne's friend Mrs. Darwin, to whom a previous will left both money and Betsy. Meanwhile, in 1884, a rainy year, cult leader Hale Appleton drowns his young dying daughter, but blackmailer Alejandro Solas steals the crystal. Schoolteacher Colin O'Brien, advised by a priest, fights Alejandro for it. During the struggle, Colin and May, the elder sister of Colin's girlfriend, Jeanette, fall into the well and time-travel into 1940though both find that certain of their memories have already been cast off as crystals. Hale Appleton arrives in 1942. Colin and May reside in what will become Phil's house while waiting for Jeanette to arrive. In 1998, a year of abundant rains, Hale Appleton instructs the avaricious Elizabeth Kelly to beguile Phil. Betsy, we learn, has May's memory crystal. Jeanette finally emerges from the well, but as yet Phil knows nothing of Appleton's obsession or of his intention to use Betsy as the vehicle to restore his long-dead daughter. This may be Blaylock's weirdest yet: intriguing, dramatic, atmospheric. -- Copyright �1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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