Rain Line (Hardscrabble Books-Fiction of New England) [Paperback]

Anne Whitney Pierce (Author)

Book Description

Series: Hardscrabble Books-Fiction of New England | Publication Date: March 1, 2002

A beautifully written novel of grief, recovery, and love.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The accidental death of her hockey star boyfriend forces a young woman to redefine her life and relationship with her parents in this lucid, crisply wrought novel set in Cambridge, Mass., in 1982. Twenty-two-year-old Leonarda "Leo" Baye--named by her eccentric parents after Leonardo da Vinci--is in the car with Danny McPhee after a party on the night his Harvard team wins a big game, when he loses control and crashes through a guard rail and into the river. But while Leo swims to safety, Danny, inexplicably, does not. Shattered by Danny's apparent suicide, scorned by his parents and conflicted about finishing her violin studies at the Boston Conservatory, Leo retreats to her musty childhood home on Cobb's Hill. Her mother, once a celebrated opera singer whose stage fright prematurely ended her career, rarely emerges from her room, while her father, a failed inventor, caters to his wife's every fragile whim. After Leo discovers that she is pregnant with Danny's baby, they all begin to have a salubrious effect on one another, bringing them "one foot over the rain line," into the "warm, sunlit place" that represents safety. This simple tale is redeemed from sentimentality by Pierce's sure, resonant prose. Leo is an appealing character and her parents, especially her mother, Lydia, who spouts statistics and non sequiturs, are affectionately and precisely delineated. In Pierce's patient hands (her Wonder Women won the 1994 Willa Cather Fiction Prize), this story of survival and healing achieves poetic immediacy.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Pierce's first novel is an outstanding work of domestic fiction in which the central action is made up of the flipped bookends of death and then birth. Main character Leonarda's daily life is a series of clich?s, surprising in light of her eccentric parents--her father is a self-styled inventor, her mother a post-breakdown prodigy. When boyfriend Danny is killed by a car crash into an icy river--a crash that Leonarda survives--the cold water wakes her from her slumber. She learns that she is pregnant with Danny's child, meets and falls for chess-whiz Kilroy, takes care of Danny's younger brother Po, passes a conservatory graduation audition, and watches as both her mother and father emerge from decades of somnolence. Advise readers to get past the purposely dull first 15 pages, and they won't regret it. Recommended for public libraries.
-Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib. of New York
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 377 pages
• Publisher: UPNE; 1st edition (March 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584652144
• ISBN-13: 978-1584652144
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,162,982 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finding a personal rainline, March 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Rain Line (Hardscrabble Books-Fiction of New England) (Hardcover)

Rainline is a modern fairytale. In it, Leo the heroine, subservient to her Male, finds herself the survivor, perhaps even the survivor in spite of her "leader's" deathwish. Leo emerges slowly and cautiously, realistically, back into her life. Picking up pieces, and recognizing the new life that survived the wreck of their lost world. Leo is a heroine of the real sort. She wants to live her life well, do what is right for her and those she loves. The people in her life are carefully drawn and developed with humor and sensitivity. The changes they go through are small changes, but changes that are of the grand scale in personal growth.

Anne has written an honest fairytale, the kind you can wish for at night under Orion's Belt.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fine first novel, April 29, 2002

By 

R. Witte (Croton-on-Hudson, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rain Line (Hardscrabble Books-Fiction of New England) (Paperback)

RAIN LINE is an exceptionally fine and elegant first novel by Anne Whitney Pierce.
On the way home from a party fueled by alcohol, the car carrying Leonarda Baye, a musician, and her boyfriend, Harvard hockey star, Danny McPhee, plunges into the depths of the Charles River.
What follows in this beautifully written and moving novel is an exploration of death and the affirmation of life, mental illness and class struggles.
Pierce skillfully weaves themes of self-esteem, survivor's guilt, physical and mental abuse, and single parenthood all into one satisfying and haunting story with beautiful prose and a deep understanding and empathy for her characters.
While RAIN LINE may never receive the kind of attention that books on a best-seller's list will, it should definitely not escape the attention of any reader of fine, literary fiction.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very satisfying, May 9, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Rain Line (Hardscrabble Books-Fiction of New England) (Hardcover)

This novel has lots of dips and turns, and despite all the hardships the main character Leo goes through, I really felt like her mental progression in addressing (or avoiding) the matters in her life were believable. One sign of the best of fiction is whether or not at the completion of the book you think the story could have been true. With the combonation of progresses and setbacks Leo experiences I found her completely understandable and I therefore thoroughly enjoyed the book.