Father of the Rain

Father of the Rain tells the powerful story of a daughter's thirty-year struggle to assemble the shards of a broken childhood, and build herself a future. It places Lily King alongside Barbara Kingsolver and Lionel Shriver as a major new female voice. 'Spellbinding... Marvelous...You won't be able to stop reading this book.' Vanity Fair When eleven-year-old Daley Amory's parents separate, Daley is flung into a chaotic adult world, rife with competition, over-indulgence and manipulation. While her mother thrives in her new life, her father becomes warped with alcoholism - and young Daley watches as he descends into an ugly state of rage, vulgarity, and self-pity. When her mother is killed, suddenly, in a car accident, Daley has to confront a stark truth: in order to forge a life for herself, she first has to break free her father's malign and controlling influence. Eventually she leaves her childhood home to attend college, and finds there a profession, a relationship, and a group of friends that offer her the security, love and support that her family never could. But just as she is preparing to take another big step into adulthood - accepting a teaching post at an Ivy League university, and settling down with the man she loves - she hears that her father has hit rock bottom. Daley is faced with a dilemma: will she return home to her broken down father, and risk a broken heart; or leave the past behind and embrace the future she has worked so hard to build?