Guest Post with Jamie Beck - The Beauty of Rain ~ JeanBookNerd

Photo Credit: Kate Kohut

Wall Street Journal and USA Today Bestselling author Jamie Beck’s realistic and heartwarming stories have sold more than three million copies. She is a two-time Booksellers’ Best Award finalist, a National Readers’ Choice Award winner, and critics at Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist have respectively called her work “smart,” “uplifting,” and “entertaining.” In addition to writing novels, she enjoys dancing around the kitchen while cooking and hitting the slopes in Vermont and Utah. Above all, she is a grateful wife and mother to a very patient, supportive family.

TEN RANDOM FACTS ABOUT THE BEAUTY OF RAIN.
1. The Beauty of Rain was inspired, in part, by a medical crisis that led me on a soul-searching journey;

2. The book is set near my home, in a seaside village where two of my friends live;

3. Amy (one of the sisters in the story) is very loosely based on Madonna Badger, a woman from Connecticut who tragically lost her children and parents years ago in a house fire on Christmas morning. I read interviews and listened to her TedTalk to dig into the mindset of someone working through that level of grief;

4. I, like Kristin, was a lawyer at one point in my professional life;

5. Some of the afterlife encounters described in the story are based on experiences I or those close to me have reported;

6. The book’s title is adapted from a beautiful, if sad, Dar Williams song title (The Beauty of the Rain), which also addresses the challenges and complexities in relationships;

7. The cover art—my favorite of all my books—came together in the eleventh hour, after many, many rounds of different concepts (phew!);

8. The book does not end as originally planned because, as I was writing, it felt like the point of the story would be made stronger by a different ending;

9. Setting up a private foundation to help a struggling community (like the one Amy contemplates) is a dream of mine;

10. Unlike the characters in the book, I would never, ever jump out of an airplane. My intense fear of heights would keep me from taking that risk.

Two devoted sisters at a tragic breaking point discover the beautiful and painful truths of being alive in a powerful novel by Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author Jamie Beck.

Winning the lottery changed Amy Walsh’s life, but the cost was greater than she could bear. In the aftermath, she struggles to find joy and purpose. Only one thing feels certain now—she will never spend one cent of the prize money on herself.

Worried, her older sister, Kristin DeMarco, invites Amy to live with her family while she heals. Unfortunately, this arrangement leads to trouble for Kristin: Divided focus affects her career. Her daughter prefers Amy to her. And Amy’s unsolicited opinions provoke tension between Kristin and her husband.

Meanwhile, Amy is making drastic plans of her own, which include giving away all her money. But first she must convince Kristin not to squander her most valuable asset—time with her family.

As the sisters help each other reimagine their futures, life’s unpredictability sends them to surprising places that test their love and resilience. Will they learn to live in the now, before it’s too late?

You can purchase The Beauty of Rain at the following Retailers: