About The One-Way Rain

. . . a novel of race and revolution—and coffee.

Twenty years have passed since the still-unexplained bombings of 9/11, and the corporate-controlled government has built an enormous wall down the middle of what used to be New England. East of the wall are bustling cities full of prosperous white consumers. West of it is the so-called Special Assistance Perimeter Interim District (SAPID), a sprawling wasteland where black and brown people displaced by the bombings struggle for survival under the pitiless eye of the Authority. (For a hint on why the government acted this way, read this. More about the story is here.)

The One-Way Rain is a fable about racial injustice in America—fable based on fact. It’s also an intense (and funny, and sexy) work of literary fiction that takes the reader into the lives, minds and bodies of two extraordinary women at the crucial moment of their intersection. The personal is political, and Lore and Sterling live this out in two very different ways. Rain explores how people resist oppression—openly and in secret, in love and in hate—and what moves an ordinary person to lay down her life for freedom.

The author of The One-Way Rain is white. In writing this book I tried, not to transcend my own privilege and racism—that would be impossible in our society—but to be aware of them to the utmost, an awareness that is still growing and that year by year, I hope, will enable me to become more fully human.