Author’s Statement

The story that became Rain Line spiraled slowly and sadly from two deaths—the first of a friend whose car crashed into the Boston Harbor one wintry night, and the second, soon after, of a cousin who drowned in a lake in Maine while swimming with her four-year-old son. The irony that they had both, like me, been “water people,” and that, in the end, water had claimed them, struck me hard. I remembered the friend waterskiing four miles in frigid Maine waters on one ski, to the dock of a tiny island in Muscongus Bay, a grin on his face all the way. I remembered the cousin, with whom I’d spent countless hours in pools and ponds as a child, bobbing and twirling, underwater tea parties, handstands and cannon-balls, Marco Polo!, pruny hands and purple lips, water up our noses, wet hair streaming down our backs. All my life, I’d known the exhilarating, soothing, healing powers of water. In these fell swoops, water had revealed its darkest, most unfathomable side.

My friend, the driver of the car, was not alone that night. He had a passenger who somehow managed to get out of the car and make his way safely to shore. I shook this person’s trembling hand at the funeral and thought about him often in the days that followed, how his life would be forever reshaped by the events of that night—how he might carry on.

In Leo Baye, I created my own survivor, placed her in a sailing car and plunged her into a dark river, then sent her spinning back up to the surface of the water, back to the childhood home she’d fled years before. The rest I offer up as not much more than a New England family saga—a bit offbeat—as all good New England sags must be, an odd mix of the bizarre and the banal. I draw from what I know—being a Cantabridgian, a daughter, a mother, a sister, a lover—from being part of a family with all of its vagaries—its secrets, riches and dearths. A family held together over time by the strange and powerful glue of shared experience and a stubborn, persistent attachment that grows wild like a weed, and, when hard-pressed, goes by the name of love.

Back to Rain Line.

1. The novel begins with an attention-grabbing opening line: “To this day I wonder if Danny knew he was going to die.” How do you respond to this as an opening? What expectations about the novel does it establish? What does it suggest about the eventual arc of the story?
2. Most people, if they think of Cambridge at all, think of it as the home of Harvard and MIT. How is this story informed and colored by its setting in a very different kind of Cambridge? How important is the setting to the story?
3. Danny is a student at an elite school who comes from a working class background. Leo comes from a family that formerly had money but has fallen on hard times. What role does class play in this novel? In what ways does it correlate or fail to correlate with education?
4. Many of the characters in this book exhibit a special skill or talent: Leo plays the violin, Danny is a hockey star, Kilroy plays chess, Leo’s father is an inventor, her mother a singer. How are the characters revealed through their particular enthusiasms? How do their activities shape your perception of them?
5. According to Danny, Kilroy “knows something big.” What do you think this big thing is that Kilroy knows? Is it the lack of this knowledge that makes Danny unhappy? By the end of the book, does Leo also know this “big thing”?
6. Many of these characters feel they lack control over their own lives. To what extent is this true and to what extent is it rooted in their own perceptions? What are some of their strategies for compensating for this lack (or perceived lack) of control? At first glance Kilroy, obsessed with a game of strategy and domination, might seem to fall into this category; to what extent does he or does he not?
7. Do Leo’s obstetrician, Dr. Early, and her music teacher, Ettore, serve as surrogate parents for her? What do they offer her that her own parents cannot?
8. What do you think about Leo’s decision to re-establish contact with Danny’s family? Is it selfish on her part? What are her expectations of this move? How are they met or not met? How does it affect the McPhees?
9. What is the function of the relationship between Lydia and Po in the story? How does their easy rapport contrast with the relationships of the other characters? How does it contrast with their own difficulties communicating with others?
10. What do you think about Danny’s behavior during the accident? Did he want to die? What does Leo think?