Into the Fire

Raising Rain by Debbie Fuller Thomas and published by Moody Publisher is the special weekend feature for the CFBA Tour. Debbie Fuller Thomas, author of the novel Tuesday Night at the Blue Moon, can also be found in several non-fiction publications including Coping with Cancer of which she is a survivor.

Four women, Bebe, Toni, Mare, and Jude, become unlikely college roommates and extended friends when they rent rooms in a rundown near-campus house they call The Victorian under the leadership of the ultra feminist in their group, “Jude” Rasmussen, during the tumultuous late 60s and early 70s. The story opens in present day circumstances with Jude fading quickly from cervical cancer and demanding a “Celebration of Life” weekend for herself with her three distant-in-many-ways old friends and her almost 39 year old daughter she named Rainbow Star back in the day. She wants a big project for a send-off, something worthy of her feminist values and lifetime devotion to “the cause” in lieu of a funeral. The cynical Jude still wields a little power over her friends and her daughter Rain who they all raised together while attending college.

Most of us have known and experienced a friend or family member who held undue influence over us either by manipulation or sheer determination to dominate. Jude intimidates on demand, condescends with ease, and uses sarcasm as a weapon to slice and dice opposition. Although in depleted health and in the background, she still dominates this story especially in Bebe’s and Rain’s lives. Bebe is the closest to Rain of the four, and the complicated reasons for this trickle into the story via flashbacks to their time together back in college and in an apology at the end.

The details of the four’s relationships and the lives of Bebe and her husband Neil, Jude and her “arrangement” with William, Rain and her desire for a child leading to the breakup with her live-in love Hayden, follow the back and forth of present to past in an interesting blend of emotional carry-overs from the past, some still in need of much healing in the present.

An interesting story, Raising Rain qualifies as thoughtful commercial CBA Women’s Fiction. I’m sure the target audience will be those who either lived through that era of “free love”, “the birth of feminism”, and the Viet Nam war or were the product of those who did. Debbie snags it well, and I could identify with Bebe’s reaction to the music of those times being played by her sons. Those of us who have some bad memories ignited by that music shudder and then catch ourselves singing along.

There were some significant copy-editing errors in the ARC I received where the incorrect character name appeared more than once. Story-wise, I think the conflict between Bebe and her older brother should have been explained more clearly earlier in the story, but I liked the resolution. Debbie aptly demonstrated how the merging lives of young students thrown together in anxious times with limited direction and lacking convictions can easily succumb to the dominance of those who insist through subtle or overt manipulation that their unbending opinions should rule over all others. Thrown into that kind of pressure cooker, some young people make decisions they regret for the rest of their lives. Raising Rain shows us how this happens and then gives us the release of forgiveness we so desperately need.

Those of us who write evangelical fiction must decide from which vantage point we approach the gospel within the story. If we aren’t careful, we end up preaching. The general rule claims this is undesirable, but you need only read The Shack to find the exception to that “rule”. Debbie Fuller Thomas takes a low-key approach to the evangelism in Raising Rain and primarily uses Bebe to show the change rendered in a life by finding real faith in God.

Father, please continue to instruct Debbie and bless her obedience to you. Encourage her with new stories and give her opportunities to share her talents. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.