A DRY SPELL by Moloney, Susie - 1997

Delacorte Press, 1997. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good+/Near Fine. A crisp clean hardcover. Goodlands, North Dakota, is enduring its fourth year of drought when Tom Keatley, rainmaker, saunters into town. Although Tom is a drifter, somehow he got the letter town banker Karen Grange sent him after seeing a TV clip of him at work. He camps out near Karen's place just as all hell--fires, sabotaged water tanks, crevasses opening in the middle of roads, huge trees falling so as to create maximum damage--breaks loose. The vengeful spirit of a woman raped and murdered by a town father decades ago is on the rampage. The spirit's hatred is behind Goodlands' dry spell, too, but everything comes round right after a final showdown between it and Tom. Meanwhile, Moloney pads a simple plot with persuasive, subsidiary rural characterizations and with incidents that betray aspirations to the King's RowPeyton Place, small-town-scandal subgenre as much as to dark fantasy. Occasionally, Moloney seems to strive for even greater literary distinction, and then the yarn reads like a blend of Stephen King and Jane Smiley. Peculiar and, Delacorte hopes, with the assistance of a big publicity push, peculiarly attractive. Ray Olson.