Arturo Islas’s debut novel, The Rain God (1984), is a foundational work of Chicano literature that unfolds as a nonlinear family saga. Set in a fictional town on the Texas-Mexico border, the novel is narrated by Miguel Chico, a university professor living in San Francisco who reconstructs the history of his family, the Angels, across three generations. Haunted by secrets and trauma stemming from their flight to the United States during the Mexican Revolution, the family navigates a complex world of cultural and spiritual conflict. Thematically, the novel explores The Negative Impact of Family Secrets, The Contradictions of Cultural and Religious Inheritance, and The Duality of a Borderlands Identity.

Like his protagonist, Islas grew up in El Paso, Texas, and left to become a professor at Stanford University. He also had polio as a child, like Miguel Chico, and underwent major intestinal surgery as an adult, experiences that inform the novel’s focus on illness and physical alienation. The Rain God was the first novel by a Chicano author to be published by a major New York publishing house and is celebrated for its complex psychological portraits and its candid exploration of gay identity within a Mexican American family. It was the first book in a planned trilogy about the Angel family—the second installment, Migrant Souls, was published in 1990. Islas was working on the third novel at the time of his death in 1991.

This guide refers to the 2020 William Morrow paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of racism, antigay bias, graphic violence, sexual content, cursing, emotional abuse, mental illness, substance use, death by suicide, child death, and illness or death.

Plot Summary

Set in a fictional town on the Texas-Mexico border, the novel traces the Angel family across three generations, weaving together stories of love, death, betrayal, and cultural identity. The narrative moves freely through time, anchored by Miguel Chico, a university professor living alone in San Francisco who pieces together his family’s history while gazing at a photograph of himself as a child walking hand in hand with his grandmother.

Miguel Chico, also called “Mickie,” is the eldest son of Miguel Grande, a police officer, and Juanita. His grandmother, Encarnacion Olmeca de Angel, known as “Mama Chona,” is the family matriarch who fled Mexico during the 1910 revolution after losing three children: twin girls who drowned and a firstborn son, Miguel Angel, shot dead on the streets of San Miguel de Allende. She renounced all joy at age 32 and raised her family to prize their Spanish heritage, insisting on cultivated speech and proper manners and encouraging them to suppress their Indigenous roots.

The novel opens with Miguel Chico recalling his own near-death experience in a university hospital, where a dormant intestinal illness nearly killed him. He miraculously survives the surgery and, from his hospital bed, he thinks about his family’s sinners: his Uncle Felix, murdered; his great-aunt, Tia Cuca, dead; his cousin, Tony, drowned; and his aunt, Mema, estranged from the family for bearing a child outside of marriage. The family holds contradictory feelings toward Miguel Chico: They suspect he belongs among the sinners because he is unmarried and rarely visits, yet they are proud that he is the first in his generation to attend a prestigious university.

In flashbacks, Miguel Chico recalls his nursemaid Maria, one of hundreds of undocumented Mexican women working as domestics on the American side of the border. Maria takes him to daily mass and buys him paper dolls, enraging his father, who accuses Juanita of turning their son into a joto, a derogatory Spanish term for a gay man. After the death of Miguel Chico’s childhood friend, Leonardo, who dies by suicide, Maria converts to the Seventh-day Adventist faith. She begins secretly reading the Bible to Miguel Chico and warns him about the end of the world. Two years later, he betrays Maria’s secret to his parents, and their relationship grows distant. When she finally leaves for Mexico, Miguel Chico refuses to say goodbye. Decades later, Juanita phones to say Maria has been killed by a drunk driver outside her church in Los Angeles, on the anniversary of his operation.

The narrative shifts to Miguel Chico’s godmother, Nina, Juanita’s younger sister. Their mother died giving birth to Nina, and their father never forgave her. Nina discovers relief at biweekly séances, where she sees visions of her dead mother and sister. When her teenage son, Tony, drowns at the smelter lake, her husband, Ernesto, stands alone on the sand behind the house, unable to weep until Juanita takes his hand.

The chapter “Compadres and Comadres,” a reference to the ritual kinship ties central to Mexican and Chicano culture, chronicles Miguel Grande’s affair with Lola, Juanita’s best friend. The affair begins after the death of Lola’s husband, El Compa, who had been Miguel Grande’s partner on the police force. Meanwhile, Felix, Mama Chona’s oldest surviving son, is murdered by an 18-year-old soldier who kicks him to death for making unwanted sexual advances. At the district attorney’s office, they are told the soldier acted in self-defense, and that the case will not be prosecuted.

The chapter “Rain Dancer” tells the story of Felix’s final day through interlocking flashbacks. Felix, who loved to dance in the rain as a child, works as a factory foreman hiring Mexican laborers. His relationship with his youngest son JoEl, a sensitive boy who can predict rainstorms by smelling the air, is marked by unspoken tension. After the murder, JoEl deteriorates, turning to substance use and experiencing a mental health crisis.

Miguel Grande confesses his affair to Juanita, who reacts with composure. A painful cycle follows in which Miguel Grande tries to maintain both relationships until Juanita confronts them both at Lola’s house, saying “If you want him, Lola, you can have him” (105). Lola moves to Los Angeles. Their passion spent, the bond among all three outlasts the betrayal. A flashback reveals the source of estrangement between father and son: When Miguel Chico was eight, Miguel Grande refused to let Juanita take him to the doctor to treat symptoms of polio. By the time the boy was treated, his leg was permanently affected. Miguel Grande never forgave himself but also never apologized.

The final chapter opens with Miguel Chico dreaming of a monster that he  clasps and throws from a bridge into fog, waking determined to tell the family’s secrets. After Mama Chona’s 80th birthday, she loses her grip on time, confusing grandchildren with their parents and speaking to her dead husband. On her deathbed, the full family gathers. Ricardo, Mema’s son, holds Mama Chona’s hands and comforts her. Her daughter, Jesus Maria, weeps and publicly apologizes until Mama Chona opens her eyes and says, “It’s about time” (179). In her final moments, she sees Felix standing between Miguel Chico and JoEl. Miguel Chico feels the Rain God, the deity of water and death referenced in a poem by Netzahualcóyotl, King of Texcoco (1431-1472), enter the room. Felix walks toward Mama Chona from the shadows, smelling like the desert after a rainstorm.