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Clouds without Rain

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Professor Michael Branden, newly deputized to the Holmes County Sheriff's Department, gives every outward appearance of being Amish. His assignment: to act as decoy in Sheriff Bruce Robertson's investigation of a series of robberies among—and perhaps by—the Peaceful Ones. Suddenly Branden's undercover work is interrupted by grave news. An Amish buggy has collided with an eighteen-wheeler, and Sheriff Robertson is among the casualties.

Branden and Pastor Caleb Troyer need information from the Amish if they are to determine how the accident is connected with a spate of disturbing events, including a buggy horse shot dead, a bank official gone missing, and land swindles involving out-of-town developers, one of whom has close ties with an Amish bishop.

It won't hurt to tell the professor what we know, the Amish surmise, implicitly trusting the man who has lived all his life in the shadow of the community to identify the traitor who lurks in their midst. But will they act before the storm clouds burst?

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 21, 2001
      In this compact and tautly written mystery, the third in the series (after Blood of the Prodigal
      and Broken English), Gaus portrays vividly the clash of traditional Amish values with the forces of land development and greed. The author knows his setting and characters intimately from teaching in central Ohio, the land of horse-drawn buggies, conservative bishops, and kids who smoke, drink and otherwise defy their elders. Here Gaus's series hero, Professor Michael Branden, goes undercover to investigate teenage buggy robbers on mountain bikes, but soon becomes involved in something far more sinister. Part of Gaus's strength lies in graphic description, as in the horrifying opening scene of auto, tractor-trailer and horse-cart carnage. Dialogue, while often extended and intense, sounds authentic when spoken by devout Germanic church members trying to resist Branden, the police and the encroaching modern world. Gaus has structured his novel Dragnet
      style, relating events day-to-day, moment-to-moment, while the plot unfolds with deceptive simplicity from the initial gruesome accident. The title is emblematic of social problems in an old-fashioned land battered by change. Rural Ohio is suffering from a summer drought, but midway through his inquiry Branden learns the true biblical significance of a "cloud without rain, blown along by the winds." This revelation will also stir the reader. (June 1)FYI:The author is a professor of chemistry and alternative cultures at Wooster College in Ohio. There's a simultaneous paperback edition at $13.95, ISBN 0-8214-1380-5.

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  • English

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