Child of a Rainless Year

by Jane Lindskold

Tor Books, $14.95, 400 pages

I am not a fan of Lindskold’s Firekeeper saga but I do love everything else of hers that I’ve read. This is a complete gem but very different from everything else she’s written. I admire that in a writer. It’s always a pleasure to find that a writer has more breadth and depth than most.

Mira is a middle-aged spinster schoolteacher. How much more trite can a character be? But that’s too facile a description – Mira is so much more and so much less. Having been fostered at nine, she is full of uncertainty and questions about what happened to her mother and who is her father. At 50+, she now has the time and impetus to investigate her roots – her foster parents are dead and she has just discovered that she still owns her childhood home in New Mexico, a huge Queen Anne Victorian house that has been shut up for forty years. But going back to her childhood home doesn’t answer anything. If anything, the questions multiply. Why were her foster parents forbidden to take her back to New Mexico or ask any questions about her birth mother? Why did her foster-father keep the home and never tell his wife or Mira? Why could no one find out anything about what happened the day her mother drove off and was never seen again? Who are the silent women who cooked, cleaned and took care of Mira-the-child? And how is it they are still in the house, taking care of Mira-the-woman?

The book is full of mirrors and reflections which are integral to understanding Mira and her mother, Colette. While Mira is on a trip of nostalgia and exploration, she carries with her the journals that her foster-mother, Maybelle, made of her own journey to find Mira’s mother and understand why she left the child… and, more importantly to May… whether Colette will ever reappear and take back the child she loves. May’s journal explored some very strange topics and theories as to who or what Colette was. While Mira reads the journals and begins to clean and rediscover her childhood home; current events and her foster-mother’s research begin to come together. It took some very bizarre events to convince Mira that she was heir to more than just a house. In fact, the house itself was more than just a structure. Mira was heiress to a strange ability that was tied to the house and her birth family. The bigger question than what happened to her mother, is the one of – was the house just a tool or was it controlling her? As it turned out, both questions were equally important and linked.

The only thing that kept me from completing the book in a day was fatigue – I fell asleep. I immediately picked it up again the next morning and read until it finished. Unlike some stories that grab me and then end; I didn’t wish for more. I was satisfied. It was a complete story, and I was happy when it ended. It was a wonderful character exploration and a fascinating premise. This is not a horror story, it is a gentle fantasy designed to pique curiosity and cause one to consider what else about our reality isn’t how it appears.

Mira’s character was fully developed and, considering that all we knew of Colette is what Mira knew, I was happy with her character. The other major character is the caretaker of the estate, Domingo, whose family and history is also linked to the house although he doesn’t discover this until Mira comes. While the reader doesn’t get any more of Domingo than Mira did, I was also satisfied with his character. The single detractor of the story, and this is more my taste than a real criticism, is the overuse of exposition. I would have preferred more adventure and risk for Mira to discover all the answers but the book would surely have exceeded 600 pages had the author done so. I also caution that the female reader may enjoy this journey of self-discovery by a woman a bit more than the male reader. I’ll keep this on my shelf for a second reading someday. – Catherine Book