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Summary
Summary
A classic murder mystery set in the 1930s Dust Bowl that portrays the era with great beauty, tenderness, and sorrowful authenticity.
--Finalist for the 2019 Oklahoma Book Awards, Fiction
"This striking historical mystery . . . is brooding and gritty and graced with authenticity." -- NPR , One of the Best Books of 2018 selected by Maureen Corrigan
"The murder investigation allows Loewenstein to probe into the lives of proud people who would never expose their troubles to strangers. People like John Hodge, the town's most respected lawyer, who knocks his wife around, and kindhearted Etha Jennings, who surreptitiously delivers home-cooked meals to the hobo camp outside town because one of the young Civilian Conservation Corps workers reminds her of her dead son. Loewenstein's sensitive treatment of these dark days in the Dust Bowl era offers little humor but a whole lot of compassion." -- New York Times Book Review
When a rainmaker is bludgeoned to death in the pitch-blackness of a colossal dust storm, small-town sheriff Temple Jennings shoulders yet another burden in the hard times of the 1930s Dust Bowl. The killing only magnifies Temple's ongoing troubles: a formidable opponent in the upcoming election, the repugnant burden of enforcing farm foreclosures, and his wife's lingering grief over the loss of their eight-year-old son.
As the sheriff and his young deputy investigate the murder, their suspicions focus on a teenager, Carmine, serving with the Civilian Conservation Corps. The deputy, himself a former CCCer, struggles with remaining loyal to the corps while pursuing his own aspirations as a lawman.
When the investigation closes in on Carmine, Temple's wife, Etha, quickly becomes convinced of his innocence and sets out to prove it. But Etha's own probe soon reveals a darker web of secrets, which imperil Temple's chances of reelection and cause the husband and wife to confront their long-standing differences about the nature of grief.
Author Notes
LAURIE LOEWENSTEIN is the author of the novels Unmentionables and Death of a Rainmaker, the first in the Dust Bowl Mystery series and a finalist for a 2019 Oklahoma Book Award. She teaches at Wilkes University's Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing and is a fifth-generation Midwesterner. Funeral Train: A Dust Bowl Mystery is her latest work.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Set in Vermillion, Okla., in 1935, this superb series launch from Loewenstein (Unmentionables) introduces Sheriff Temple Jennings and his stalwart wife, Etha. Once relatively prosperous, Vermillion's farmers must contend with the continuing crop-killing dust storms, and when they suffer, so do the merchants. People are willing to turn to charlatans who offer false hope, such as rainmaker Roland Coombs. Strangers, many of them young men from families who couldn't afford them, fill nearby vagrant camps. Others find refuge in the local Civilian Conservation Corp camp. Cleaning up after a nasty dust storm, theater owner Chester Benton finds Coombs's body buried in a pile of dirt. Someone apparently bashed in the victim's head with a board or a pipe, and 19-year-old Carmine DiNapoli, a CCC camper, is arrested for the crime. Etha, convinced of Carmine's innocence, sets out to prove it to Temple. Loewenstein beautifully captures the devastation of the land and people in the dust bowl. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A small-town sheriff in 1930s Oklahoma, already dealing with the effects of the Depression and a drought, must solve the murder of a rainmaker who failed to make it rain.Sheriff Temple Jennings and his wife, Etha, have made Vermillion, Oklahoma, home for the last 15 years, having moved west to avoid memories of the place where their young son died. Everyone in town is struggling because of the Depression, but the farmers are especially hard-hit, trying to keep crops and animals alive without rain for 240 days. Certain town leaders, among them Jennings' rival for the upcoming sheriff's election, have paid to have a rainmaker come to town in hopes of making it rain. But the day after the man's TNT blasting failed to bring a drop, he's found dead outside the local movie theater. Suspicion falls on a local Civilian Conservation Corps young man who arouses the maternal instincts of Etha. She begins her own investigation, uncovering some dark town secrets along the way. In measured and only occasionally overwritten prose, Loewenstein (Unmentionables, 2014) movingly describes the events and the people, from farm eviction auctions and hobo villages to Dish Nights at the movies. She vividly brings to life a town filled with believable characters, from a young woman learning her own worth to the deputy sheriff figuring out where his loyalties lie.This warm and evocative novel captures a time and place, with well-researched details shown through the lives and circumstances of one American town. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
AS FAR AS I'm concerned, Joe Ide can't write them fast enough. His unorthodox hero, Isaiah (IQ) Quintabe, happily met again in WRECKED (Mulholland, $27), is a brainy private eye from Los Angeles who helps his neighbors deal with the usual neighborhood problems: "store thefts, break-ins, lost children, wife-beaters, bullies and con men." For his services, he's usually paid in casseroles, cookies and home repairs; Louella Barnes even settled her bill by knitting him a reindeer sweater. But that sort of trade-off looks to change when a painter named Grace Monarova walks into his life, along with the prospect of bona fide, negotiable cash in order to find her mother. But the money seems less important than what else might be on offer: the sort of serious love interest that was missing from his first two cases. Unfortunately, like IQ's deadbeat clients, Grace tries to barter, paying him with his choice of a painting - although the poor guy is so smitten, he might have settled for a peanut butter sandwich. Despite being lovestruck, IQ is professional enough to realize that Grace isn't telling him everything, which makes the investigation a lot harder than it needs to be. Just the same, he's floored when a simple missing persons case leads to a vengeance drama involving an electric cattle prod with enough volts "to knock a steer sideways" and a savage beating that has him hanging tough but eventually screaming for mercy. "The only thing holding him together was the thought of the crew working on Grace. Beating her, assaulting her, breaking her fingers, breaking her art." A prologue featuring a group of former guards from the American military prison at Abu Ghraib (where they received "no instructions, regulations, limits, guidelines or supervision") provides a harrowing back story that explains why IQ is so hard-boiled. His innate sweetness in the face of such mad-dog cruelty is more of a mystery, one we'll look forward to puzzling out in his next adventure. John sandford's madly entertaining Virgil Flowers mysteries are more fun than a greased-pigwrestling contest. The plots are outlandish; the characters peculiar; and the best bits of dialogue are largely unprintable. So it is with HOLY GHOST (Putnam, $29), which is set in Wheatfield, Minn., a worn-out town of 650 weary souls who elected Wardell Holland mayor on the basis of his pitifully honest campaign slogan: "I'll Do What I Can." But nothing less than a miracle could put this hamlet back on its feet. Happily, a miracle is exactly what it gets when apparitions of the Blessed Virgin at St. Mary's Catholic Church bring in hordes of coinjingling believers to patronize the local stores, including the mayor's own establishment, "Skinner & Holland, Eats & Souvenirs." But just when commerce begins to perk up, a sniper starts taking random potshots at visitors and residents alike. This is a situation that calls for Virgil Flowers, an agent with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, who brings a fresh eye and a keen sense of humor to the case. Although his formal investigation largely has to do with tracing ballistics, Virgil makes time to take in the sights, teach a lesson to a vicious bully and sample the terrible cooking at Mom's Cafe. IT'S always cold, damp and foggy in Anne Perry's Victorian mysteries featuring William Monk, commander of the Thames River Police. The atmosphere is exceptionally murky in DARK TIDE RISING (Baliantine, $28), which opens with a kidnapping that leads to a savage murder on Jacob's Island. "This place is like death," observes a visitor to this floating charnel house, where rotting houses are slowly sinking into a "thick, viscous mud that sucked anything of weight into itself, like quicksand." Perry makes cunning work of the plot, which raises issues of trust and loyalty while driving home a grim message about the vulnerability of women who entrust their fortunes to unscrupulous men. But it's the river that dominates the book, a mysterious presence "full of powerful currents, bending back on each other as they found obstacles, filthy, strongly tidal and ... cold enough to rob you of breath." after 240 days without rain and crops devastated by "grasshoppers as big as prairie dogs," the farming community of Jackson, Okla., is ready to pin its hopes on a rainmaker. But in Laurie Loewenstein's Depression-era mystery, DEATH OF A RAINMAKER (Kaylie Jones/Akashic, paper, $16.95), that effort ends when the man is murdered. Sheriff Temple Jennings would rather look into this crime than perform his more onerous duties, like foreclosing on Jess and Hazel Fuller's farm. The murder investigation allows Loewenstein to probe into the lives of proud people who would never expose their troubles to strangers. People like John Hodge, the town's most respected lawyer, who knocks his wife around, and kindhearted Etha Jennings, who surreptitiously delivers home-cooked meals to the hobo camp outside town because one of the young Civilian Conservation Corps workers reminds her of her dead son. Loewenstein's sensitive treatment of these dark days in the Dust Bowl era offers little humor but a whole lot of compassion. Marilyn STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.
Library Journal Review
In the 1930s, Jackson County, OK, went more than 240 days without rain, so a group of local businessmen hires an itinerant rainmaker, Roland Coombs, who claims his efforts with TNT and blasting power will make it rain in five days. But in the midst of a violent dust storm the next day, Coombs is killed. Sheriff Temple Jennings already has a lot on his plate: attending farm foreclosures, dealing with his reelection campaign, and investigating minor crimes such as a peeping Tom. When Temple's murder investigation leads to Carmine DiNapoli from the Civilian Conservation Corps, he finds himself at odds with his wife, Etha. Carmine reminds Etha Jennings of their dead son, and she'll do everything in her power, even some sleuthing herself, to prove the young man didn't kill Coombs. This richly detailed historical mystery brings the Dust Bowl to life, with the hardscrabble farms and semirural community barely coping with the losses of farms and local businesses. VERDICT This evocative first volume in a new series should appeal to readers of Larry D. Sweazy's "Marjorie Trumaine" mysteries or Donis Casey's Oklahoma-set "Alafair Tucker" books. Fans of narrative nonfiction, including Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time, the book that inspired this work, may also want to give it a try.-Lesa Holstine, -Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
