COMING OCT 15, 2021
Thunderclouds in the Forecast
Thunderclouds in the Forecast traverses the linked histories of two friends—one Black, the other white—who grew up wards of the state in New York. It’s April 1976 and Ray is taking Amtrak to San Francisco to reconnect with Scotty, his oldest friend, whom he met in a shelter for abandoned children. While Ray has embraced the stable tedium of steady employment, Scotty’s life has been erratic, a trail of short-lived affairs and dead-end jobs. Maybe Ray, who’s just won the lottery, is finally in a position to help him.
When Ray’s train is delayed in Lorena, a Gold Rush outpost turned college town, he meets Alice. Together they embark on a romance that tempts him to stay. By the time Ray arrives in San Francisco, Scotty has abandoned his bartending job, his rented room, and his scant belongings and skipped town with a married woman from Lorena. Now Ray has more than one reason to return.
A preeminent American writer who thrives on reinvention, Clarence Major returns with an unforgettable exploration of life on the brink of sweeping change. With spare prose and subtle poignancy, Thunderclouds in the Forecast probes love, loyalty, and belonging. As Toni Morrison wrote, “Clarence Major has a remarkable mind and the talent to match.”
Praise
“. . . 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