Hard Rain Falling

By: Don Carpenter

Narrated by: Elijah Alexander

Don Carpenter's Hard Rain Falling is a tough-as-nails account of being down and out, but never down for good - a Dostoyevskian tale of crime, punishment, and the pursuit of an ever-elusive redemption.

The novel follows the adventures of Jack Levitt, an orphaned teenager living off his wits in the fleabag hotels and seedy pool halls of Portland, Oregon. Jack befriends Billy Lancing, a young black runaway and pool hustler extraordinaire. A heist gone wrong gets Jack sent to reform school, from which he emerges embittered by abuse and solitary connement.

In the meantime Billy has joined the middle class - married, fathered a son, acquired a business and a mistress. But neither Jack nor Billy can escape their troubled pasts, and they will meet again in San Quentin before their strange double drama comes to a violent and revelatory end.

©2009 Don Carpenter (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"A powerful, uncompromising book, realistically written, brutal in the raw intensity of its action...highly recommended." (Library Journal)

"Don Carpenter is a particular favorite of mine. His first novel, Hard Rain Falling, might be my candidate for the other best prison novel in American literature." (Jonathan Lethem)

“Hard Rain Falling is a unique read; violent, tender, inexorable, and melancholic; a beat-era book of disaffected young men devoid of On the Road euphoria but more poignant and gripping for its fatalistic grounding. The small lives contained herein are indelible.” (Richard Price)

The

For every good day, there will be a bad day. However, every bad day comes with a good one.

Hard Rain Indeed

A brutal, consistently startling 1966 novel of a hardscrabble (ex-)con in the Pacific Northwest and the worlds he attempts to inhabit through a lifetime that keeps pushing him to the margins. Excellent addition to the New York Review series

Good narration

Average at best story, and very predictable. Came highly recommended. Very much a let down.

A tale of usery

This novel is a reflection of its time. echoing a male-centric world of our grandparents. The story is mellowed and brittle.

Incredible

This pulled at my heart in a very strange and unexpected way. Beautifully soaked in the human experience.