Rain Song is Alice Wisler’s first novel. She has since written several others that I have yet to read, but intend to. Wisler grew up in Japan, but now resides in North Carolina. You’ll find elements of Wisler’s own life woven throughout this book. For a limited time, Rain Song is free on the Kindle, and is in the top 20 of the Kindle Top 100 free books list.
Rain Song is thought provoking, with a relaxed, conversational tone. If you want action and suspense, you might want to consider something different. It is a curl up on the couch on a rainy day with a cup of tea type book. Rain Song is set in Mt. Olive, North Carolina, and the main character is Nicole Michelin, a 31 year old middle school English teacher.
The book is about overcoming fears and getting what you truly want from life. Rain Song also focuses on Nicole’s relationship with her family, particularly her close relationship with her grandmother and her young cousin.
Nicole was born in Japan and lived there until tragedy took the life of her mother. She has an extreme fear of flying. Nicole fights to overcome her fears of flying as she develops a special relationship with Harrison Michaels, a young man living in Japan who responds to her columns on a fish website. You’ll discover how Harrison plays an important role in his connection with her time in Japan.
When striving to overcome fears, it is important to keep your eyes on what’s on the other side. Nicole had the choice of whether she wanted to let her fear of flying run her life, or face it head on in order to have the ability to get the things she truly wanted.
It took me a little while to get into Rain Song, but I liked reading from Nicole’s perspective, and her thoughts and interactions with her family and peers. I also enjoyed learning a little bit about Japanese culture.
“This is one of those books that makes me grateful for public libraries — because if not for a display of this author’s books in honor of her coming booksigning in our town I would never have stumbled upon this little gem. It is a deceptively simple book — on the surface the plot would take about three lines to summarize and the characters an equal amount of text. Yet swimming beneath that is depth of thought, of feeling, of description. It’s one of those books that makes me question the separation between the narrator and the author herself because the main character is so real, except that the author has published multiple books. The realism of her narrator, then, speaks to talent and imagination — as does the book itself. “