Death of a Rainmaker

 

Death of a Rainmaker: A Dust Bowl Mystery by Laurie Loewenstein
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Great title. Fun read. It's not that shocking, or twisty, as a detective story. It's pretty straight-forward and the characters are all a little stock-board, with a twinge of sentimentality. Where it shines is the setting and details of the dust-bowl and Depression-era Oklahoma. I haven't read very many books in this setting and reading about the dust storms, the veterans issues from WWI, the Civilian Conservation Corp, even how the movie houses ran, were all interesting. Read it as a historical novel with a detective story thrown in.

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There is no man more hopeful than a farmer.

Hazel had fed her family three times a day on that china, had memorized every petal on every flower as she washed, dried, and stacked.  And now they were nothing more than secondhand plates to some stranger, wiped clean of meaning.