Rain Shadow

Jane Bow is eight years old when two men from a city hundreds of miles away take a buckboard journey across the Mojave Desert and change her life forever. At 28, she’s living the fast life in Jazz Age LA—until dynamite blows that up too. Later, much later, she begins to wonder if she hadn’t been blind to clues that something far more sinister was going on.

Rain Shadow is the story of the violent conflict between Los Angeles and Owens Valley over water. “California’s Little Civil War,” the subject of global news coverage in the 1920s, is told through the eyes of a fictional young woman whose life is shaped and torn by it. Nuanced portrayals of real-life characters on both sides of the conflict—William Mulholland, Mary Austin and Teddy Roosevelt among them—avoid easy answers as to who was right or wrong. Yet the best and worst of human nature flows through these pages, as it did through the actual historical events.

This epic struggle over water and power continues. The Rain Shadow story, which begins 100 years ago, is searingly relevant today, as Southern California continues to seek ways to satisfy its ever growing thirst. 

This ebook is interactive: It includes an original music score, with tracks available for playing at relevant places in the text. There are also over 75 pop-up pages, containing background information and photos, as well as a pan/zoom map.