When It Rains: A Memoir by Maggie Mackellar

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Wear to book corners and edges. Previous owner has stamped inside page.

When Maggie'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, the backbone of the family, mother to three children, and 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 life and moving forward, one step at a time. (back cover)