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Hard Rain Falling

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About this listen

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. Action & Adventure Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Fiction Crime

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)
All stars
Most relevant
This was hard to listen to in that, it was pretty depressing, reliving the abuse of Jack as a child and how it affected him in later life. In fact, Jack should have been quite unlikable due to his behaviour; but there was still this feeling of sympathy for him and his lost childhood, that enabled you to keep rooting for him.

A Tough Listen

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An absolute hidden gem of American literature. Great structure and style. Characters slice of life. Got a bit lost in the middle so lost a bit of interest, but still really good.

Excellent. For some reason not as enjoyable as expected but still great.

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