If It Rains by Jennifer L. Wright

If It Rains by Jennifer L. Wright
Series: Stand Alone
Publisher: Tyndale Fiction (July 6, 2021)

Review by Gwen M. Plano

It’s rare to open a book and begin turning pages that feel strangely familiar, as if the author had recorded your family’s life. If It Rains by Jennifer L. Wright did just that for me, and I was taken aback.

The story is set in the 1930s when the Great Depression, coupled with the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, left people starving and desperate for help. My father was from Sayre, Oklahoma, and experienced some of the worst conditions as a child. His parents and siblings lived in a tent and moved with the crops. They had nothing—much like many of the characters in this story, especially sisters Kathryn and Melissa.

From one chapter to the next, Wright skillfully unveils the hidden experiences of those who lived covered in dirt, breathing a dry, deadly dust. As she does so, the horror of that historical period sets a stage that echoes to this day. The rich and the forgotten poor; the landowners and the workers who tended the fields; the distant North with lakes and rain; and the suffering southern states that had neither. Through it all, I saw my dad as I’ve never seen him before.

At one point, Melissa’s circumstances are so dire, she thought God had abandoned her:

Where was God in this place? The God of my mother, of my youth—I could no longer see Him or feel Him here. He had abandoned this place. Abandoned me. And I had never, in my entire life, felt so alone.

Kathryn was gone. Pa was gone. Henry was a stranger. God was all I had left. So I was chasing Him. Chasing Him the only way I knew how: the way my mother had done—through acts of love that sometimes seemed reckless, crazy, making no sense at all. I was chasing Him through the mirror of things that could have been.

-Jennifer L. Wright, If It Rains

This was an extraordinary read for me. Wright captured the time period well by revealing the people’s desperation and resilience. Her writing was vivid and pulsed with life’s challenges. I read most of the story through tears, sometimes stopping just to get my breath.

Heartbreaking and unforgettable, If It Rains haunts me still. Through it, I experienced a time and place I’d only known through a few worn photos and random stories, but now I see/feel the interior and exterior landscape of that era, and I am deeply moved.

I highly recommend this novel to anyone interested in the Great Depression and how people survived it. For me, this was a strong Five Fish read.   

I purchased the Kindle version of If It Rains