Sometimes you leave home to find yourself; sometimes you leave church to find God. Seeking sanctuary, Stella found both in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl.
Set in the American south and southwest in 1935, If It Rains is the epic story of Stella Blackstone and how she encountered God in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. At seventeen, Stella, crippled since birth, lives alone with her father, Brother Blackstone, a fundamentalist minister. When raped by someone she didn't know, Stella becomes pregnant and tells her father. Because it suits his preaching message, Brother Blackstone concludes that this must be no ordinary pregnancy: Stella must be the virgin mother of the Second Coming of Christ.
Stella decides she cannot live her father's lie, so she leaves home. Her journey then takes her to the remote panhandle of Oklahoma, an area devastated by drought. She meets Ruth, a fiercely intelligent farmer struggling to keep her farm and family alive through extraordinary hardship. But the situation is too desperate, Ruth departs the farm and leaves Stella to be helped through the last weeks of her pregnancy by Jarvis, the family farm hand.
After fighting desperately to survive and keep her baby alive, Stella gives birth. Finally she concludes: maybe everyone is a miracle and the child of God; maybe the world would be better if everyone knew it.