Caveat - Hardcover

Kalpakian, Laura

3.89

27 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0895872234 ISBN 13: 9780895872234

Publisher: Blair, 1998

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In 1916, rainmaker Hank Beecham agrees to return to his hometown of St. Elmo, California, to rescue it from a devastating drought and bring honor to his family's besmirched name

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Review:

It's 1916 in the fictional town of St. Elmo, California, and it hasn't rained in weeks. Drastic measures are due. Over steak, eggs, pie, and coffee, St. Elmo's biggest bigwigs strike a deal with the much maligned rainmaker, Hank Beecham: if he fills the reservoir with water, they'll pay him $50,000; if he fails, he won't get a cent.

When Hank heads up into the hills with his dynamite, caps, and gunpowder as well as his "battalion of tins and ladles, a flotilla of scoops and long-handled spoons," most of the town is skeptical. But when explosions and flying debris give way to that old familiar pitter patter, it's apparent Hank is no amateur in procuring precipitation. This time, though, he's gone too far. Before you can say "hell in a handbasket," the dam's about to burst, and with it Hank's hopes of retrieving his financial due.

In this tightly woven tale of honor, love, and greed, we're supplied with a healthy dose of odd characters, page-turning intrigue, and a playful look at the Old West. "Like metal from which every alloy has been burnt off, leaving only what is hard and pure," Kalpakian puts her prose through the proverbial refiner's fire. What is left can only shine.

From the Inside Flap:

Hank Beecham's rainmaking abilities have brought him twenty years of fame all over the arid West. In 1916, the city fathers of St. Elmo, California, ask Hank to return and rescue his hometown from drought. Rather than pay his exorbitant fee, they propose a bet: Hank's skills against nature. Hank accepts, with this single caveat: he shall get credit for every drop of rain that falls from that day forth.

The bet offers Hank a chance to redeem his family's name. The Beechams were a shiftless lot, luckless, drunken, and violent. Hank's father, a Confederate veteran, had raged and failed on a ranch sentimentally named Shiloh. Hank, however, escaped Shiloh, moved into town with his long-suffering mother, Eulalie. Returning to St. Elmo stirs up Hank's memories of her death and his own love affair with an older woman.

In paying a long-forgotten debt to Doctor Tipton, the grim Hank strikes an unlikely friendship with the convivial doctor. But Lucius Tipton is appalled to discover what Hank truly plans for St. Elmo.

The rainmaker unleashes a devastating flood, destroying lives, property, livestock. And when at last Hank comes to collect on his bet, the city fathers refuse to pay unless_according to his own caveat_he will accept responsibility for the ruination his rain has wrought.

Hank Beecham leaves, vowing to take his money out of St. Elmo's soul. Time means nothing to Hank. Eight years later, he sets up at Shiloh, prepared to take his revenge.

Based loosely on historical events in 1916, Caveat tells a tale of rain and revenge, the power of the past to imprison and to illuminate.

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