Ileen McDuring
Image-bearer breeders. They’re only too real. In this haunting new novel, Ileen McDuring, author of House of Tables, composes a darkly elegant requiem of womanhood. It is 2011 and Jena Thompson is wife to handsome and powerful Senator Tim Thompson. Raising her nine children in Memphis, Tennessee, Jena’s life is filled with home school, purity ring ceremonies, front-yard interludes with gossiping and entertaining sexagenarians, a roving sex offender, and memories of college best friend, Brendolyn Napier.When Brendolyn returns to Memphis and Tim’s family casts out his lesbian sister, Marilis, it sets in motion a violent and sinister chain of events beyond Jena’s imagination. Now Jena’s life hangs in the balance during the pre-mature labor of her tenth child in seven years. With her future and the life of her child in the hands of her husband, Jena flashes black to pivotal moments that have brought her to this bed and, for the first time, she must face choices between friendship or function, love or power. Flush with feminine beauty, filled with humor, sorrow, and the heart of motherhood, When Arrows Rain is a gripping novel of the American South.
