Red Rain: A Novel Hardcover - 2010

“A rich, thick stew of an historical novel, powerfully imagined and thoroughly believable…Red Rain is an engaging and bloody-minded read of great conviction that hints at a dark vision of the American present through its confident handling of our past….Gorgeous.” —Peter Behrens, The Washington Post
 
“Remarkable….Written with a gritty, melancholy beauty, Red Rain is American storytelling at its best.” —Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today
 
“A sprawling, meandering novel, chock-full of sensory detail that is sometimes painfully acute…Murkoff is a master at [the] evocation of time and place.” —Michele Leber, Booklist
 
“[A] dense, deliberate, and lush saga that will surely appeal to readers who appreciate brawny historicals.” —Publishers Weekly
 
“It is not sufficient to say that Bruce Murkoff is a terrific writer of historical fiction.  He’s a terrific writer, period, and his ability shines through again in Red Rain.” —Kevin Baker
 
“In prying his spade to uncover a remote backwater and its inhabitants during seminal moments of America’s history, the Civil War as well as the Indian wars of the western expansion, Bruce Murkoff takes a tremendous risk, but the result is page-turning brilliance. With a remarkable cast of characters and spot-on authenticity, Red Rain delivers no simple tale of love, loss, greed, ambition and racism but delves beyond these categories, spinning an engrossing tale of the viciousness and hopes of the human spirit. Given the central setting on the mid-Hudson river, it’s impossible not to consider the possibility that Bruce Murkoff may be a modern Rip Van Winkle, emerging to bear witness. Red Rain is that rare achievement, a novel both grand and deeply grounded.” —Jeffrey Lent
 
“Bruce Murkoff is the most natural novelist I’ve read in years, very much in the tradition of Dickens and Twain.  His dialogue is as pitch-perfect as birdsong at dawn.  Red Rain is steeped in the natural world of great unspoiled swatches of 19th-century American geography.  Best of all, Murkoff writes about his splendidly varied characters as easily and affectionately as if he grew up with them all.  I haven’t been so engrossed by a novel from this era since Lonesome Dove.” —Howard Frank Mosher
 

Bruce Murkoff lives with his wife, the artist Suzanne Caporael, in Stone Ridge, New York.