Book description
When Elsa's father is killed in a tornado, all she wants is to
escape - from New York, her job, her boyfriend - to somewhere new,
anonymous, set apart. For some years she has been haunted by a sight
once seen from an aeroplane: a tiny, isolated settlement called
Thunderstown. Thunderstown has received many a pilgrim, and young Elsa
becomes its latest - drawn to this weather-ravaged backwater, this
place rendered otherworldly by the superstitions of its denizens. In
Thunderstown, they say, the weather can come to life and when Elsa
meets Finn Munro, an outcast living in the mountains above the town,
she wonders whether she has witnessed just that. For Finn has an
incredible secret: he has a thunderstorm inside of him. Not everyone
in town wants happiness for Elsa and Finn. As events turn against
them, can they weather the tempest - can they survive at all? The Man
Who Rained is a work of lyrical, mercurial magic and imagination, a
modern-day fable about the elements of love.
Ali Shaw grew up in Dorset and graduated from Lancaster
University with a degree in English Literature. He has since worked as
a bookseller and at Oxford's Bodleian Library. His first novel, The
Girl with Glass Feet, was a huge commercial and critical success, won
the Desmond Elliot Prize and was shortlisted for the Costa First Book
Award. He is currently at work on his third novel.
