In The Midnight Rain

• Author: Ruth Wind
• Publisher: Harper Collins
• Year: 2000
• Setting: East Texas
• Amazon Listing - In the Midnight Rain

Ellie Connor is a biographer with a special talent for piecing together fragments of the past. Her latest project, though, promises to be her most challenging--and personal. Not only is she researching the life of a blues singer who disappeared mysteriously forty years ago, but Ellie is also trying to find the truth about the parents she never knew. The love child of a restless woman who died young and an anonymous father, Ellie has little to go on but a faded postcard her mother sent from a small, East Texas town--the hometown of her latest subject. It is there that Ellie meets Blue Reynard, a man with deep roots and wide connections who may help her find answers.

Awards

• RWA Top Ten Books of the Year;
• Library Journal's Top Five Romances of the Year,
• Romantic Times' Best Contemporary of the Year

Reviews

• Intriguing and absorbing." - Sandra Kitt, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

• "In her mainstream debut, Ms. Wind blows away much of the competition with a remarkable rousing drama that touches the inner soul of the reader." - Harriet Klausner, Book Browser Reviews

• "Stunning! Powerful! Eloquent! Emotional! These are just a few of the words I'd use to describe this wonderful story. To say I loved it is a huge understatement. Ruth Wind has written a gem of a book for her breakout novel" - Kate O'Connell

• "A multiple RITA award winner, Wind (aka Barbara Samuel), has many strengths that show well in "Midnight Rain." With La Vyrle Spencer's retirement, Wind/Samuel inherits the crown as the Queen of Heartfelt Emotion. Wind is more consistent than Spencer, indeed, than most, and her contemporary heroines are more complicated and interesting. She also gracefully delves into cultural territory that publishers often discourage romance writers from entering. Issues of race, ethnicity and class form the solid backbone of many of Wind's novels. "In the Midnight Rain" traverses the social landscapes of an integrated east Texas small town with respect and love." - Lynn Coddington, Contra Costa Times