Rain Dreams

In this absurd but tender comedic novella, nineteen-year-old Taylor Morrison lives in a small town where very little happens. He spends his days wondering if life has somehow forgotten to begin. One day he meets Rainy Robinson, a sharp-tongued runaway with a notebook full of secrets and a talent for turning every simple situation into a complicated one. What follows is a hilarious rain-soaked road trip involving gold coins, cheap motels, abandoned dreams, and Uncle Jimmy—a former police officer, now a failed detective and the enthusiastic carrier of loaded firearms, who refuses to let Rainy out of his sight. He has his reasons. So does his sister, Rainy's mother, who hired him. It isn't all about money exactly. Okay, it's all about money. The farther Taylor follows Rainy's attempt to escape, the less certain he becomes about where they're going, what they're doing, or why he keeps saying yes to ideas that make no sense. Yet somewhere between arguments, improbable coincidences, more rain, and plans that collapse almost immediately, he discovers that some people are worth following and trying to hold on to. And it has nothing to do with money. This quirky comedy—that Taylor hopes will become a love story—quickly becomes anything but. He has an adventure, which he later calls a quest. He is temporarily kidnapped. He witnesses stray bullets fired at paintings of fruit. And he drives through days of rain without a clue where he's going—because love sometimes makes us do crazy things.