Linden Kemp’s grandmother tells her: Old age is a privilege our men never got to know.

Linden’s grandfather drowned trying to save others when Hurricane Hazel lashed an unprepared Toronto. The hippie father she never knew died in the monsoons of India. Her husband slipped from life on the black ice of freezing rain. In her work as a climatologist, Linden knows the world faces more natural disasters. This knowledge and her legacy of death darken her view of the future.

When a letter, held back by her grandmother, reveals her father had a second child who lives in California, Linden travels to Death Valley, the driest place on the continent and a cherished spot she visited often with her husband. There, in the sparseness of the desert, she seeks her half-brother and answers to the mystery of her father’s abandonment. She says goodbye to her husband and vows never to rely on anyone else ever again. But weather still has a lesson to teach her: life must still be lived fully in the calm between storms.

Through vivid landscapes and complex characters, Rains, At Times Heavy explores how one moment, one trauma, can spiral through the generations until a single person steps bravely into its path.

Debi Goodwin is a travel writer, photographer, blogger, former CBC journalist, and author of Citizens of Nowhere. She lives and gardens in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.

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