Rain Dragon
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Damon and his girlfriend Amy have had enough of Los Angeles. Fitful and tired and dreaming of a simpler life, they leave the city to go work on a community farm. But they've scarcely arrived when their vague hopes start to come unraveled: What are they really doing here? Who are their friends? Are they truly testing themselves, or are they just chasing a fantasy that will never be fulfilled?
By degrees, they realize that their dreams are not the same. For Damon, a career in the field of branding unfolds almost effortlessly, while for Amy, the menial labor of the farm leads to a satisfying but difficult new path. As the rift deepens, they are forced to evaluate fundamental questions of identity and fate, ambition and betrayal, compromise and lust.
This novel is a fresh, searching story about the love of work and the work of love, and the life destinies that we sadly only recognize in retrospect.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Screenwriter and author Raymond (Livability) puts a fresh spin on an old notion in his new novel. Damon and Amy are L.A. professionals who pull up stakes and begin anew at an organic farm located near where else? Portland, Ore. Although it takes time for them to fit into the new community, Amy eventually becomes assistant to a beekeeper, and Damon a "marketing guerrilla" for the farm's products. But their relationship founders, and Amy separates from Damon. Peter Hawk, the farm's charismatic founder, asks Damon to join him in a new venture using Peter's New Age philosophies to start a management consultancy for companies. Damon sets himself to the task vigorously as he cautiously tries to win back Amy, discovering that success in one may lead to failure in the other. Although the low-key story lacks drama, the author holds the reader's attention with the crystalline purity of his prose. There's pleasure to be derived from his meticulous observations of how systems work and people think. In the end, fans of the author's idiosyncratic screenplays for Wendy and Lucy, Meek's Cutoff, and Mildred Pierce (co-written with Todd Haynes) will find the same qualities in this intelligent novel.
