The Year It Rained

Seventeen-year-old Elizabeth Stein returns from a year of madness to discover that everything she’s ever known is falling apart, leaving her to fight for happiness in a life filled with confusion and turbulence as she untangles the mysteries of the past in this “beautiful and significant book about love” (The New York Times).

Seventeen going on thirty, Elizabeth Stein has just survived three suicide attempts and a stint of treatment in numerous mental hospitals. Returning to the mother that everyone desires and a father sliding into alcoholism, as well as two lovers and all the freedom in the world, she is unsure how to move forward with scars on her wrist, scars on her soul, and all of life’s problems dancing in her head.

In this rich and sensual novel, as timeless as Catcher in the Rye and as moving as Ordinary People, Elizabeth sets out on a journey of discovery, courage, hope, and fear. After a year when the loneliness and pain seemed to have no end, she is back in the world again. Now is the time when she must search for the meaning in the madness, all while fighting for happiness and facing the future for the first time on her own.

Crescent Dragonwagon’s books for children include Half a Moon and One Whole Star and Home Place. She’s also the author of several novels, a book of poetry, and cookbooks, such as Passionate Vegetarian. With her late husband Ned Shank, she is the cofounder of the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where she lives. You can also visit her at Dragonwagon.com, where the weather is whatever you'd like it to be.