Rain Reign

Rain Reign is a work of middle-grade contemporary fiction written by American author Ann M. Martin and published in 2014. The novel was chosen for the 2014 New York Times Notable Children’s Books list. Martin is the original author of the best-selling Baby-Sitters Club series of books and has written over 100 books for young readers. She has received numerous awards over the course of her career, including the Newbery Medal in 2013 and a Distinguished Service Award from the American Association of School Librarians in 2015. Early in her career, Martin worked as a teacher for students with special needs, and she has said this experience influenced her later work. This guide refers to the 2018 First Square Fish paperback edition.

Plot Summary

Eleven-year-old Rose Howard lives with her father, Wesley, in the small town of Hatford in upstate New York. Wesley has always told her that her mother left the two of them when Rose was young, and she doesn’t remember her mother at all. Rose has been diagnosed with high-functioning autism, which makes learning in a conventional classroom environment difficult. Rose sometimes feels isolated from her peers because of her disability. Wesley works intermittently at a local garage and spends much of his free time in a neighborhood bar.