Book description
The heart-wrenching but triumphant story of rebuilding a life and a
family.'My body, suddenly, carries two stories of loss ... One is easy
for people to recognise. My mother died of cancer. I watched her age
twenty-five years in eight weeks ... My other story marks me as
different. It is more silent and more savage, it is not pure and no one
knows how to approach it. Somewhere I lost my husband.' When Maggie
Mackellar's vibrant young husband, father to a five-year-old daughter
and an unborn son, dies tragically, Maggie is left widowed and due to
give birth three months later to their second child. Then her beloved
mother, backbone of the family, mother to three children, grandmother to
two, dies suddenly of aggressive cancer. In two short years, Maggie's
life has shattered. After a year, she gives up trying to juggle single
motherhood and the demands of an academic career and returns with her
children to the family farm in central western New South Wales to take
stock and catch a breath. The farm becomes a redemptive, healing place
for Maggie and her children as they battle the heat and drought that
only the Australian landscape can offer. She throws herself into the
horses, sheep, ducks and chickens and slowly, finally, realises she has
found a new shape for herself. Written by a brilliant new talent, When
It Rains is a meditation on grief and the vagaries of the human
condition, and a stunning memoir about piecing back together a life, and
moving forward, one step at a time. An unforgettable story of love and
courage that inspires even as it breaks your heart -- Susan Duncan
Maggie Mackellar was born in 1973. She has published two books on the
history of settlement in Australia and Canada. She now lives in Tasmania
with her partner and children.
