When Rain Spoke in Tongues - A haunting, tender work of magical realism about an uncanny gift, a garden that remembers, grief and motherhood, a town afraid of what it can't explain, and the hard magic of letting go

The rain fell only inside Maggie's fence. And it called her by name. In the fishing town of Crag's End, Maggie Oakes mends nets by lamplight and tries not to listen to the storms. Her husband Nathaniel drowned. Her daughter Eliza is coughing blood into a pillowcase. Grief, she tells herself, does things to a person's ears. Then a column of water falls straight into her yard and nowhere else. The street stays dry. The neighbor's roof stays dry. Twenty feet of silver rain, pouring into the ruts between the pump and the back door. And through the glass, in two soft syllables, it says the name only Nathaniel ever used for her. Magpie. Maggie can call the rain. She doesn't know how, and she doesn't want it. But the herbs in her garden hold old words, the tide answers when she's frightened, and a sick child is wasting away in the next room. The town's preacher, Silas, has opinions about a woman who summons storms. So does the parish. "It's bad luck," Silas keeps saying, "to use a dead man's tools." And still he keeps repeating an offer Maggie can't bring herself to sign. As the gift grows stronger, so does the flood gathering at the edge of Crag's End. A second rain. A healing she can't explain. A fever that comes back worse. To heal Eliza, Maggie must find the source of the voice in the downpour. To save the town, she may have to give up the very thing keeping her daughter alive. And to finally let Nathaniel go, she will have to listen to what the rain has been trying to say all along. Some gifts are a mercy. Some are a debt. And some ask for everything you have left. When Rain Spoke in Tongues is a haunting, tender work of magical realism about an uncanny gift, a garden that remembers, grief and motherhood, a town afraid of what it can't explain, and the hard magic of letting go. Perfect for readers who love quietly supernatural fiction, lyrical coastal settings, grief and healing, folklore and the uncanny, and books like Practical Magic and The Snow Child. A moving standalone novel.