Death of a Rainmaker: A Dust Bowl Mystery

"Reading Death of a Rainmaker is like slipping through time right into a 1930s black-and-white movie. Suddenly you live in Jackson County, Oklahoma, during the Dust Bowl, and you know what the cinema and the hardware store and the courthouse look like, and the townspeople are your family, and you care so deeply about what happens to them that you can't tear your eyes from the pages of this book. It's odd for a story about a murder to be gentle and generous, but this one is. I fell in love with everyone in town, except of course those who turned out to be trouble. Laurie Lowenstein has a knack for writing the early twentieth century...I'm smitten."
--Robin Oliveira, author of Winter Sisters

"Laurie Loewenstein's vivid Death of a Rainmaker is at once an engrossing yarn, an elegant inquiry into human desperation, and a portrait of Depression-era America so searingly authentic that the topsoil practically blows off each page."
--Louis Bayard, author of The Pale Blue Eye

"During one of America's most devastating periods--the Depression-era Dust Bowl--a huckster is murdered as a duststorm hurtles into a small Oklahoma town. What follows is an authentic tale of the drought-stricken southern plains, and a lovingly and eloquently told murder mystery. It is not just the unfolding plot and the metaphorical obscuring of truth by dust, but Lowenstein's masterful prose, with its tender language and skillful resonance, that will captivate readers and keep them enthralled. Death of a Rainmaker is both a gripping tale of murder and a glimpse into resilience and love in a time of savage loss, scarcity, and fear."
--Leslie Schwartz, author of Angels Crest

"As if the black blizzards of the Dust Bowl weren't worrisome enough for an Oklahoma sheriff and his spunky wife, in Death of a Rainmaker Laurie Loewenstein piles on even more troubles--a murder victim's corpse buried in a sandstorm, an array of possible perpetrators, a small community already riven by secrets and swirls of distrust, and a contentious election in which the sheriff's honesty and competence are on the ballot. Like the storms themselves, the plot powers its way across the landscape and seeps into everything it encounters."
--Dayton Duncan, author of The Dust Bowl

"When the wind comes sweeping down the plain in Death of a Rainmaker, Laurie Loewenstein takes your breath away. Her haunting and vivid prose deftly describes the opening chords of a dust storm and the tornadoes of dirt that left families dead of dust pneumonia or dead broke. In this gripping tale of a sheriff searching for a killer in a dying town, Loewenstein rounds up characters with true grit, cunning, and kindness. Ultimately, the mystery in her timeless, compassionate novel is how much we should watch out for ourselves or others."
--Mary Kay Zuravleff, author of Man Alive

When a rainmaker is bludgeoned to death in the pitch blackness of a colossal dust storm, small-town sheriff Temple Jennings shoulders yet another burden in the hard times of the 1930s Dust Bowl. The killing only magnifies Jennings's ongoing troubles--a formidable opponent in the upcoming election, the repugnant burden of enforcing farm foreclosures, and his wife's lingering grief over the loss of their young son.

As the sheriff and his young deputy investigate the murder, their suspicions focus on a teenager serving with the Civilian Conservation Corps. The deputy, himself a former CCCer, struggles with remaining loyal to the corps while pursuing his own aspirations as a lawman.

Meanwhile, the sheriff's wife Etha is secretly bringing meals to the hobos camped outside of town. It has been fifteen years since her young son accidently drowned back east, and in the malleable adolescent faces of the young men around the campfire she imagines how her own Jack might have looked. As the evening wears on and Etha overstays her welcome, she is rescued by one of the teenagers, Carmine, who comes from the mean streets of Chicago.

When Temple arrests Carmine, the CCC suspect, he is housed in the county jail and Etha takes advantage of her position as prison cook to get to know him. While she sits outside his cell and he wolfs down her apple pies, he tells her his story. She quickly becomes convinced of his innocence and sets out to prove it. But Etha's investigations soon reveal a darker web of secrets, which imperil Temple's chances of reelection and cause the husband and wife to confront their long-standing differences about the nature of grief.