When It Rains
(Paperback)
Publishing Details
When It Rains
By (Author) Maggie MacKellar
Random House Australia
Vintage (Australia)
1st December 2011
Australia
Classifications
General
Non Fiction
Coping with / advice about death and bereavement
155.937092
Physical Properties
Paperback
240
Width 127mm, Height 197mm, Spine 19mm
196g
Description
"My body, suddenly, carries two stories of loss...One is easy for people to recognise. My mother died of cancer. I watched her age twenty-five years in eight weeks...My other story marks me as different. It is more silent and more savage, it is not pure and no one knows how to approach it. Somewhere I lost my husband." When Maggie's vibrant young husband, father to a five-year-old daughter and an unborn son, dies tragically, Maggie is left widowed and due to give birth three months later to their second child. Then her beloved mother, backbone of the family, mother to three children, grandmother to two, dies suddenly of aggressive cancer. In two short years, Maggie's life has shattered. After a year, she gives up trying to juggle single motherhood and the demands of an academic career and returns with her children to the family farm in central western New South Wales to take stock and catch a breath. The farm becomes a redemptive, healing place for Maggie and her children as they battle the heat and drought that only the Australian landscape can offer. She throws herself into the horses, sheep, ducks and chickens and slowly, finally, realises she has found a new shape for herself. When It Rains is a meditation on grief and the vagaries of the human condition, and a stunning memoir about piecing back together a life, and moving forward, one step at a time.
Reviews
An amazingly honest treatise not only on grief, but on human condition. --Canberra Times
Maggie MacKellar explores the landscape of pain bravely and with great effect. --Age
Succeeds masterfully. --Australian Book Review
The conviction in the power of hope and love found in this deeply moving memoir mustn't be missed. --Woman's Day
Wrenching and eloquent. --Sydney Morning Herald
Author Bio
Maggie MacKellar was born in 1973. She has published two books on the history of settlement in Australia and Canada. She now lives in central western New South Wales with her two children.
