Rain Breaks No Bones: A Novel

EVERYBODY HAS SECRETS. EVEN THE DEAD. Fifty-year-old Violet has had a good life. The love of an honest man. The joys of motherhood. Yet, even in 1955, her heart still aches over the death of her sister more than four decades earlier. Lately, Violet can't help thinking about the little girl, picturing her in the moments before the accident, wearing that pleated white dress and a hair bow to match. Maybe if her big sister were here now, she could tell Violet what to do about the secret she's been keeping from her daughter Daisy. Daisy has a secret of her own. When she first moved back home to Scranton, she wasn't ready to give up her dreams of performing in Atlantic City. Then she met Johnny, a man who needs music as much as she does. Her first real chance at love. If only they can find the courage to buck small-town thinking when it comes to interracial dating. Small-town thinking. Zethray had seen her fair share of it. That's why she advertised a room to rent in The Negro Motorist Green Book. Give folks a safe place to stay away from home. That's how Johnny ended up at her door. Now he's sweet on some young woman. Not that he told Zethray, but she knows. The dead like to talk, and she listens. If only her mother would tell the secret behind her shocking death. Instead, she stands silent, while that little girl with the bow in her hair runs wild. Rain Breaks No Bones is the final novel in Barbara J. Taylor's Scranton Trilogy, starting with Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night, followed by All Waiting Is Long. Though the novels are connected, they each stand alone.

About the Author :
BARBARA J. TAYLOR was born and raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania. She sets her novels in the hometown she loves and fills them with miners, evangelists, vaudevillians, nuns, gangsters, prostitutes, widows, musicians, dreamers, and a seer or two. She is the author of Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night and All Waiting Is Long. Rain Breaks No Bones is the final installment in her Scranton Trilogy.

Review :
[P]owerful . . . Every page is saturated with the 1930s milieu as the sisters navigate the adversities of their reality on a sea rough with the unrealistic expectations of well-intended idealists both religious and secular. As if to highlight those expectations, Taylor periodically interrupts her third-person narrative with Greek chorus-type commentary from the Scranton-based Isabelle Lumley Bible Class, including excerpts from a 1929 sex manual for women. The overall result is a thought-provoking book club discussion cornucopia.-- "Booklist, starred review of All Waiting Is Long" A profound story of how one unforeseen event may tear a family apart, but another can just as unexpectedly bring them back together again.-- "Publishers Weekly, on Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night (a Best Summer Book for 2014)" Taylor's careful attention to detail and her deep knowledge of the community and its people give the novel a welcome gravity.-- "Columbus Dispatch, on Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night" As I turned the final page, I wasn't at all ready to say goodbye to these compassionately imagined, vividly drawn characters. In Rain Breaks No Bones, the shadow of guilt, shame, and anger haunts--sometimes literally--Taylor's mid-twentieth-century Scranton, Pennsylvania. Here, as a stone cast in a river, events of the past continue to disrupt the present. Yet rising within her decent, troubled folks is the possibility of both courage and grace. Taylor delivers a powerhouse story of small-town life that resonates far beyond the time and place.--Laurie Loewenstein, author of Funeral Train Set in the 1930s, Taylor's suspenseful and intricate follow-up to Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night tells the story of sisters Violet and Lily Morgan . . . Taylor delivers startling plot twists and incisive commentary on the social unrest of a coal-mining town during the Great Depression. Covering a six-year span, the novel reveals the consequences of arduous labor and widespread sterilizations that came with the eugenics movement. Among the prostitutes, mobsters, and miners is a web of interconnected lives that come together for a breathtaking ending in Taylor's fine sequel.-- "Publishers Weekly, on All Waiting Is Long"