Rainy Lake

by Mary Francois Rockcastle

Overview

In Rainy Lake, author Mary Rockcastle invites the reader to savor the sights, sounds, and smells of summer at her parents' lopsided lakefront cabin during the 1960s. From the landscape of her memory, Danielle Fillian paints a sensitive and wise family portrait of summers filled with fly-fishing, swimming, water-skiing, new friendships, and a deepening first love. But with the intrusion of the Vietnam War and the rumblings of the civil rights movement growing steadily nearer, this sheltered vacation community is forced to acknowledge the harsh realities of the wider world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781555972424
Publisher:	Graywolf Press
Publication date:	03/01/1996
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	282
Product dimensions:	5.48(w) x 8.88(h) x 0.90(d)

Read an Excerpt

Rainy Lake

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By Mary Rockcastle

Graywolf Press

Copyright © 1994 Mary Rockcastle
All right reserved.
ISBN: 1-55597-242-X

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Chapter One

From "BYOL Party (1966)"

I was dreaming of my mother marooned on our dock, which bobbed like a cork in the middle of the lake. As I sat up in bed, gazing into the cobwebby dark, the sound started again. I leaned my head against the screen and listened. There it was: the low, choking sound of a woman weeping.

I crept downstairs and stood at the closed glass door leading onto the porch. My mother's bare toes and the white edge of her nightgown shone in the dim light. After setting a chair down by the window, I stood on it and pulled the half-open window wide, peering over the sill at my mother huddled at one end of the swing. Her pale neck was visible beneath the line of her hair, which tumbled forward on either side of her face. She was rocking slowly back and forth, her arms cradling her knees. Sobs slipped down the front of her nightgown and seemed to strangle there. I could hardly catch the few muffled words.

"Never ... what does it matter ... never, never ... not once ... not in my whole life."

I'd so rarely heard my mother cry. It was even more rare for me to see her like this-all alone, not a mother or a wife, just a woman who'd once been a girl. There wasn't a thing I could do to help her.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Rainy Lake by Mary Rockcastle Copyright © 1994 by Mary Rockcastle. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

There is emotional heft in Ms. Rockcastle's careful portraits of the pensive narrator and her disappointed, hard-drinking parents, and of Billy, who goes 'down the tracks' with the local girls but falls in love with 15-year-old Danielle.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Rockcastle has painted a vivid, flesh-and-bone portrayal of a family and their lakeside summers.” —The Hungry Mind Review

“To leave Rainy Lake is to be left with 'the lingering smell of lake water,' the haunting memory of a real girl struggling to come of age against the backdrop of the '60's, racism and Vietnam.” —Sandra Benitez

From the Publisher

Set in a small lakefront community, Rockcastle's debut novel tells of a young girl's coming-of-age amidst the larger turmoil of the 1960s. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In this wonderfully fresh coming-of-age story set against the social upheavals of the 1960s, a family so full of promise at the beginning ends up fragmented and bitter. With her brother and parents, young Danny spends every summer at Rainy Lake in the old log house her architect father has transformed into a summer house. Danny and her best friend pass idyllic summers swimming, boating, reading, and going to country club dances, even as her father's heavy drinking threatens to tear the family apart. As Danny secretly nurtures her forbidden love for Billy Dove, the son of a white father and a black mother, her radical college-student brother takes a strong stand against the Vietnam War. Rockcastle flawlessly depicts the final argument about the war and respect for authority between Danny's brother and her ranting, drunken father-an argument that leads to tragedy. While the author's affectionate look at adolescent experiments with tanning lotions that turn the skin orange lend humor, this is ultimately an authentic, moving portrayal of a family. Highly recommended.-Patricia Ross, Westerville PL, Ohio

Library Journal