The History of Rain

Our story begings in 1915. While convalescing in an English army hospital, Rain, a veteran of the Great Wart now raging across Europe, finds solace in aiding the buildings' groundskeeper. An unlikely apprentice gardener, he buries himself in this work. The bulbs, the tubers, and the soil care not that his face is now deformed forever. I say give your the earth your rage, young man, and she'll give you flowers, the groundskeeper tells him. And so he does. In the ensuing decadence of the postwar years, Rain finds himself lured into the intricate and lavish world of landscape gardening. In demand to a certain upper-class clientele, he travels the world to create magnificent gardents for clients and, eventually for the pictrues during Hollywood's Golden Age. But the nomadic nature of his work is also a way for him to chase his unrequitred love, Lily. A sprawling story written in stunning, spare language, this anticipated new novel from the master wordsmith behind Big Town and I Still Hvae a Stuitcase in Berlin is a lyrical, magical, and starkly realist meditation on the dissonant worlds that emerge from the conflict, and the lenghts we'll go to chase the illusion of love.