Praise

“Ray Jansen, the protagonist of Thunderclouds in the Forecast, doesn’t share those worries. He is not an artist. Or if he is, then he is an artist of life: someone who makes the best out of the worst. Ray was abandoned by his parents and grew up a ward of New York. But he is an impressively stable young adult: an Ivy League school graduate, a supermarket manager and now – a lottery winner. With his newfound fortune, he travels to California on the trail of his best friend, a troubled white man named Scotty O’Brien who was also abandoned as an infant. But Scotty is nowhere to be found. Ray decides to stick around regardless and start afresh. Thunderclouds in the Forecast is a poignant exploration of the human need to find a place to call home. Set in the 1970s, it is also somewhat reminiscent of the films of that era by John Cassavetes: observational, naturalistic, pared-down.”
—Theo Zenou, The Times Literary Supplement

“. . . leaves the reader thinking about the book long after it’s closed.”
—Crystal Wilkinson, author of The Birds of Opulence

“In his latest novel, Thunderclouds in the Forecast, Clarence Major offers readers a glimpse into the life of Raymond Jansen. It’s enchanting, even a bit mysterious, to read a story that slaps of fated moments at every turn when the protagonist himself is an abider of coincidence. Ray is a slow burn of a character, which kept me turning the page, and seeing life through Ray’s lens is the truest pleasure of the novel. Major expertly writes a protagonist whose untidy backstory, Blackness, and good luck serves as fertile ground for challenging questions of fortune, family, faith, and fate.”
—Brenna Womer, author of Honeypot

“What comes of two abandoned boys, one Black and one white, who fall into fast friendship while wards of the state of New York? That’s the elusive truth one of them, lottery-winner Ray, needs to know. And that’s what readers of Thunderclouds in the Forecast learn bit by bit in carefully wrought, well-observed prose—until realities both startling and seemingly inevitable overwhelm Ray in this poignant, Steinbeckian, timeless novel about the restlessness of the human heart.”
—Mark Wisniewski, founding editor of Coolest American Stories Anthology

“A poet and visual artist as well as a fiction writer, Clarence Major has written a moving story of an African American man seeking a place for himself in the contested racial landscape of 1970s California. Ray Jansen, an African American man in his late twenties, comes to San Francisco to seek out Scotty, the white boy he grew up with in shelters and foster homes in New York. While searching for the troubled companion of his youth, Ray encounters love, possessiveness, jealousy, microagressions, and overt racial animus as he tries to settle in the town of Lorena, north of the Bay Area. Read Thunderclouds in the Forecast—a beautiful telling of one of our oldest and truest stories, a wanderer’s search for the solace of home.”
—Lawrence Coates, author of Camp Olvido

“What role does luck play in our lives? Clarence Major’s Thunderclouds in the Forecast offers a moving and troubling answer as it explores the lives of two men—one Black, one white, both abandoned orphans from birth, both survivors of the New York state foster care system. When Ray, a modern-day Gatsby, pursues his friend Scott to California, their lives take unexpected turns, resulting in both hope and tragedy. A thought-provoking study of fate and its consequences by an award-winning author and poet.”
—Minrose Gwin, author of The Accidentals: A Novel