Thunderclouds in the Forecast - Paperback

by Clarence Major (Author)

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, 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."

Author Biography

CLARENCE MAJOR is a novelist, poet, and painter. His novels include Dirty Bird Blues; Such Was the Season, a Literary Guild selection; My Amputations, winner of the Western States Book Award; Painted Turtle: Woman with Guitar, a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year; and One Flesh. He has contributed to the New Yorker, the New York Times, and Harvard Review, among dozens of other periodicals. He is the author of fifteen collections of poetry. A Fulbright Scholar, Major has won a National Book Award bronze medal, a National Council on the Arts Award, a Lifetime Achievement Award in the Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, and a PEN Oakland/Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award for excellence in literature. He was elected to the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2021. Major is a distinguished professor emeritus of twentieth-century American literature at the University of California, Davis.