Call Down the Thunder: A Crime Novel

(Paperback)

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Description

Desperate times call for desperate measures in Kalteis's lightning-fast crime caper story.

Sonny and Clara Myers struggle on their Kansas farm in the late 1930s, a time the Lord gave up on: their land's gone dry, barren, and worthless. The bankers are greedy and hungry, trying to squeeze them and other farmers out of their homes; and, on top of that, their marriage is in trouble. The couple can struggle and wither along with the land or surrender to the bankers and hightail it to California like most of the others. Clara is all for leaving, but Sonny refuses to abandon the family farm.

In a fit of temper, she takes off westward in their old battered truck. Alone on the farm and determined to get back Clara and the good old days, Sonny comes up with an idea, a way to keep his land and even prosper while giving the banks a taste of their own misery. He sets the scheme in motion under the cover of the commotion being caused by a rainmaker hired by the mayor to call down the thunder and wash away everyone's troubles.

'With an enemies list including bankers, loan sharks, and the Ku Klux Klan not to mention ferocious dust storms farmer Sonny Myers takes drastic measures to survive in late-1930s Kansas. So dire are the conditionsstruggling friends convince him the only way to save his parched land and stick it to the bank that just repossessed his stove and sewing machine is to rob that bank. Kalteis does a brilliant job of planting us in this particular time and place with details such as'hinges creaking like all Kansas hinges creaked'and a continuous soundtrack of songs by the likes of Woody Guthrie, Woody Herman, Jimmie Rodgers, and Tex Ritter. Even at its darkest, the story is lifted by a light, engaging touch. A sharp-witted, affecting noir, Dust Bowl-style.' Kirkus Reviews

Reviews

"Immensely readable, tough but beguiling, Call Down the Thunder is a highly original novel: a pacy caper set in ugly times as the dust bowl, the depression, and the Klan gang up on a ragbag of dirt farmers, circus folk, and one indomitable woman, all hoping to scrape by till the rains come. Laugh-out-loud funny, lump-in-the-throat moving, and packed with surprises. I loved it." -- Catriona McPherson, multi-award-winning and national best-selling author of Strangers at the Gate

Author Bio

Dietrich Kalteis is the award-winning author of Ride the Lightning (bronze medal, 2015 Independent Publisher Book Awards, for best regional fiction), The Deadbeat Club, Triggerfish, House of Blazes (silver medal, 2017 IPPY, for best historical fiction), Zero Avenue, and Poughkeepsie Shuffle. He lives with his family in Vancouver, B.C.