Fistful of Rain

Rancher Tyler Dawson, the sheriff of Meriwether County, Ore., sums up the previous year, 1974, in the brief, cogent prologue of Birtcher’s elegantly written, bleak sequel to 2017’s South California Purples, as “one of the most demoralizing that I could remember.” He goes on to comment on such downbeat topics as the Watergate scandal and the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. This sets the tone for what follows: 17-year-old runaway Mila Kinslow leaves Tennessee by bus and eventually finds her way, with Peter Troy, a sweet-tempered rock musician she meets in L.A., to a hippie commune known as Rainbow Ranch in Meriwether. Meanwhile, sheep rancher Harper Emory claims that he was beaten by the hippies when he got into a dispute with them about some missing lambs. Ty vainly tries to keep the peace as tensions rise between the locals and the Rainbow Ranch residents. Two murders raise the stakes. Ty may strike some readers as almost too smart, too well educated, and too pedantic for a small-town sheriff, but his insights into 1970s social issues make him an irresistible spokesman for the era. [em](Apr.) [/em]