Carolyn Turgeon’s coming of age novel Rain Village (2006) tells the story of an abused and belittled girl who finds an unlikely mentor. Set in the early part of the 20th century, the novel moves from the protagonist’s miserable upbringing in rural Kansas to her coming into her own as a trapeze artist in a glamorous Mexican circus. Although the novel does not feature any overtly fantastical elements, Turgeon’s writing creates a sense of heightened reality. Nevertheless, some readers find the novel’s descriptive style overly repetitive. Twelve-year-old Tessa Riley grows up the butt of her family’s jokes and the recipient of their more malicious abuse because of her unusually diminutive stature. Barely four feet tall, with hands the size of small plums and tiny starfish-like fingers, Tessa is unsuited for the daily labor required on her family’s corn and potato farm—she can barely hold one of the bigger potatoes with both hands. Her siblings consider her a freak and call her insulting names like “munchkin, tramp, and black-haired Jezebel.” Her Bible-obsessed mother forces her to hang for hours from a specially positioned curtain rod to stretch out her body. Her father, an enormous and tyrannical man who enjoys tormenting those weaker than him, doesn’t allow his children to go to school, so Tessa and her siblings are illiterate. When Tessa hears that the nearest town, Oakley, Kansas, suddenly has a new librarian, she is both intrigued and worried. But when she makes her way to the library one day after lunch, Tessa encounters the most beautiful woman she has ever seen—the stunning and alluring Mary Finn. Mary immediately takes a shine to Tessa, making the girl feel so comfortable that soon Tessa confides everything about her awful home life to Mary. As a gesture of her kind intentions, Mary teaches Tessa to write her name, promising to teach her how to read. Mary also tells Tessa about her life before the library: Mary, known as Marionetta, used to be a trapeze artist in Mexico’s famed Velasquez Circus. Tessa is beyond enthralled with the worldly, stylish, and kind Mary. She shares her excitement with her sister Geraldine, who is amazed because she has actually heard of the Velasquez Circus. But when Tessa reveals her wish to grow up to be just like Mary, Geraldine makes fun of her—there’s no way the freakish Tessa could ever look like the incredible Mary. Mary and Tessa become close. Not only does Mary work in the library, but she also has a sideline reading Tarot cards and making up mysterious herbal mixtures for any of the town’s women who come to her with problems. Several years later, when Tessa is old enough, Mary hires her to work in the library. Through her newfound ability to read, Tessa learns about the wider world and her eyes are opened to the narrowness and stifling quality of her Kansas life. With Tessa’s adolescence comes a new form of torture—her father begins sexually assaulting her. Even as she tries to cope with this abuse, Tessa finds Mary becoming increasingly despondent. Mary tells Tessa more about her past. She grew up in the tiny community of Rain Village, where she was engaged to a man named William. However, when William drowned in the river, Mary fled her life until she found the circus. The image of the dead William floating in the water has haunted Mary ever since. Eventually, her emotions get the better of her, and Mary drowns herself. This tragedy inspires Tessa to do something to escape her daily hell. She runs away, using Mary’s journey as a guide. Making her way to Kansas City, Tessa waits for the Velasquez Circus’s annual visit and then joins the troupe when they leave. Amazingly, because of her many hours hanging from the “stretching rod” and because of Mary’s many descriptions of trapeze artistry, Tessa is a natural on the trapeze. She also feels completely at home in the circus for the first time in her life: Gone are her aggressively normal siblings, here replaced by sword-swallowers, animal tamers, and the circus’s main act, the Ramirez family of trapeze artists. She falls under the sway of Lollie Ramirez, a beautiful and exotic performer who takes Tessa under her wing and shows her the literal and figurative ropes. Tessa is also enthralled by the rest of the family, known as the Flying Ramirez Brothers: Carlos, Paulo, Jose, and Mauro. Each brother is handsome and debonair, and together with their sister, they teach Tessa how to completely let go of her fear and perform unprecedented aerial feats. Eventually, Tessa becomes the star attraction of the Velasquez Circus. She also falls in love with and marries Mauro, a sweet and loving husband. Nevertheless, despite her apparent happiness and success, Tessa cannot let go of her memories of and her grief over Mary. In response, she becomes increasingly fixated on Mary’s stories about Rain Village and William. Soon, Mary’s ongoing visions of William’s body recur in Tessa, who constantly imagines the young man. Tessa realizes that there were many gaps in Mary’s story, and she has no real understanding of how William ended up in the dangerous river in the first place. After ruminating on Mary for years, Tessa gets the chance to solve the mystery when Mary’s nephew Costas arrives at the circus. Tessa knows a little bit about Costas from Mary’s stories, so when he announces that he is traveling to Rain Village, Tessa leaves her husband and life behind once more to travel with him. Costas is also on some kind of escapist pilgrimage to his aunt’s birthplace: He has left his wife and child to make the trip. Readers point to this last section of the novel as unsatisfying. Despite Tessa’s desire to know what happened between Mary and William, her trip to Rain Village reveals no answers. William’s death remains ambiguous. It’s possible it was accidental and equally possible that Mary killed him either because she felt stifled by their future marriage or because William was actually cheating on her. Nevertheless, something about this journey makes Tessa feel she has found herself.

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Carolyn Turgeon

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