I Will Send Rain

"A book about Oklahoma in the 1930s demands a spare . . . style to match the landscape. I Will Send Rain obliges . . . .evocative . . . timeless." —New York Times Book Review

Annie Bell can't escape the dust. It's in her hair, covering the windowsills, coating the animals in the barn, in the corners of her children's dry, cracked lips. It's 1934 and the Bell farm in Mulehead, Oklahoma is struggling as the earliest storms of The Dust Bowl descend. All around them the wheat harvests are drying out and people are packing up their belongings as storms lay waste to the Great Plains. As the Bells wait for the rains to come, Annie and each member of her family are pulled in different directions. Annie's fragile young son, Fred, suffers from dust pneumonia; her headstrong daughter, Birdie, flush with first love, is choosing a dangerous path out of Mulehead; and Samuel, her husband, is plagued by disturbing dreams of rain.


With her warm storytelling and beautiful prose, award-winning author Rae Meadows brings to life an unforgettable family that faces hardship with rare grit and determination.


"Meadows paints the Bell family's desperation with compassion and warmth, and her precise language turns grit into gold." —Emma Straub, New York Times–bestselling author of Modern Lovers

"Meticulously researched, deeply felt, and beautifully written." —Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times–bestselling author of Prep and Eligible


"A vibrant, absorbing novel." —Publishers Weekly, starred review


"An exceptional talent . . . Similar to John Steinbeck's haunting portrait of tenant farmers in The Grapes of Wrath, but also with the gritty, bittersweet elements in Rilla Askew's Harpsong and the poignant lyricism of Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust." —Booklist, starred review