When Rain Comes

When Carolyn Wyngate arrives in Chula Vista, California, in August 1915, taxi service is a truck driven by Nate, a young orchardist, enthusiastic about his hometown. He quickly becomes enthusiastic about her. Carrie resists his overtures of friendship. She’s focused on her teaching career and absorbed with hiding the pain of what she lost in Chicago. Immediately, she learns that the community of Chula Vista is suffering losses, too. A four-year drought is destroying crops and dreams. Early in December, the city of San Diego hires Mr. Hatfield, a rainmaker, who sets up a tower the first of January near a mountain reservoir and begins mixing and releasing chemicals into the atmosphere. Within days, it starts to rain; and in three weeks, nineteen inches fall. Creeks and rivers overflow. Houses, animals, and people are swept into the bay. Roads, rail beds, and telegraph lines wash away. The highest number of casualties occurs south of Chula Vista when the Lower Otay Dam collapses. Nate is in the storm, having gone out earlier in the day to warn residents. Carrie is terrified. Faced with tragedy, she focuses on one thing—her love for Nate; but it might be too late to tell him. Even if Nate survives, the flood of 1916 is an unlikely time and place for love to flourish. Life is in disarray. Normalcy is disrupted. Can anything ever be right again?