"Only the Rain"

Randall Silvis is the internationally acclaimed author of over a dozen novels, one story collection, and one book of narrative nonfiction. Also a prize-winning playwright, a produced screenwriter, and a prolific essayist, he has been published and produced in virtually every field and genre of creative writing.

Silvis applied the Page 69 Test to his new psychological suspense novel, Only the Rain, and reported the following:

On page 69 of the hardcover edition of Only the Rain, Russell, the narrator, wrestles with what to do with his ill-gotten gains. Unfortunately for him, he’s not a championship thinker. He knows that he has to do something before the crap hits the fan, but what? Every plan has its own consequences. And those consequences have their consequences. And the fan keeps spinning.

Like most young adults, the first twenty-something years of Russell’s life had been guided, if not determined, by others. He was raised by his grandparents, went into the Army right after high school, got married, had two kids, went to college, got a job. All along the way he had people telling him what to do, or people expecting him to behave in a particular way. Now, because of one spontaneous decision, he finds himself with no one to advise him. His is a man utterly alone, and at wit’s end.

So he draws on past advice from the three people he relied on when he was younger. But that advice is contradictory, and much of it seems barely relevant to his current dilemma.

Man, he thinks, all I ever wanted or expected out of life was to have a decent job…, stay reasonably healthy, raise good kids and put them on their own paths to success, and then enjoy my last twenty years or so playing with my grandkids.

Page 69 occurs approximately a third of the way into the novel. Russell is about to make another decision that will lock him into a potentially disastrous confrontation with the bad guys. He is about to discover, for better or worse, what all of us must eventually learn: that every decision we make has the potential to either stain or illuminate the soul.

Learn more about the book and author at Randall Silvis's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Boy Who Shoots Crows.

My Book, The Movie: The Boy Who Shoots Crows.

My Book, The Movie: Only the Rain.

--Marshal Zeringue