If Only the Rain Would Come

At the center of this gritty novel-in-stories is Hazel. A teacher at the local elementary school, she is intelligent, introspective, and lonely. When Hazel's secret lover, Walker, dies and his identical twin, Sam, comes home from Afghanistan looking just like the dead, Hazel's world is shaken. But her life appears the same to strangers—having exchanged one married twin in her bed for another.

As Hazel's relationship with Sam deepens, the community and their intertwined lives rise to the forefront: Andy, a teenager struggling with his father's death; Rachel, an outsider concealing trauma from her youth; Gina, a girl searching for belonging in the wake of placing her child for adoption; and Sam, a veteran haunted by ghosts of the past. As the residents of Warm, West Virginia, cope with addiction, grief, poverty, and abandonment, Hazel must confront her own life choices and weigh their cost.

Revealed through a brilliant chorus of voices with dialogue that sings off the page, Natalie Sypolt's If Only the Rain Would Come is unflinchingly honest and deeply human.