In The Midnight Rain

This book was riveting. I loved it and did not want it to end. Story tellers like this weave a beautiful tale and it is so amazing to read and let it wash over you

Thanks for another wonderful read. I am a seventy one year old woman with a successful small business that won't let me retire-yet. Good fiction has been one of the things that lets me live in my head with characters that I am unlikely to meet in "real" life. Such satisfaction. Looking forward to reading more of your work. Thanks again.

So many memories and meaningful history. Immerses you in the lives and secrets that lived and breathed not so long ago.

Enjoyed it from beginning to end. I also loved the diversity in characters and somewhat surprise ending (though I had a hunch about who Ellie's father was and was happily surprised to find that I was correct.) The other surprise family member was completely unexpected, but it was a really good twist. Great book.

Ellie is a musical biographer, who sets out to write about a semi-famous, amazingly talented black blues singer, Mabel Beauvais. Right the on verge of hitting the big time, Mabel disappeared suddenly in the early 1950s and was never seen again publicly. Ellie visits Mabel's home town to get background and is also seeking answers about her own late mother and unknown father, because her mother visited the town the year before she was born. Ellie has been invited by Laurence "Blue" Reynard, an Internet pen pal to visit the little east Texas town. Blue is a wealthy, drop dead gorgeous ladies man, who has a PhD in botany and shares Ellie's love for music, especially the blues. Blue is a widower, whose life has been filled of loss, losing both parents and his only brother before he was a teenager.I found In the Midnight Rain very interesting. Though not political, it touches deeply on the Vietnam War and how those losses have affected others. And in exploring Mabel's life and secrets, Ellie finds out some of her own. I especially loved the interaction between the characters, which felt so real. Even the secondary characters were interesting.I did have minor problems with the story, primarily with time lines. The story appears to be set around the year 2000 and the time lines given throughout the story do not match up with the history and ages of the characters. I found myself thinking, "What??" that doesn't make sense, he (or she) has to be older than that! For example, although Blue's exact age isn't given, when he and Ellie meet, she describes him as 35 at the most. But Blue stated that he was eight or nine in 1968 when several guys in his hometown went off to war. And if James was born in 1952 he would not have been old enough to be drafted for the war in 1968. Near the beginning of the story, Mabel is said to have disappeared in 1953 - later the year is given as 1952. There were other examples where the dates didn't match the history given. I also had a problem believing that a young sensible woman would stay with someone (although in a separate guest house) who she knew only through Internet chat. Ellie had not checked Blue out or even spoken to him on the telephone prior to traveling to Gideon. The problems I've cited would have bothered me a lot more, had the story not been so well-written. In all, I enjoyed In the Midnight Rain and recommend it as a worthwhile read.

Thank Ms Samuel, thank you for this truly beautiful book. I couldn't wait to finish it. I cried, I laughed, and I cheered for Ellie. This young woman set out to write a biography of a musician with a mystery surrounding her disappearance and also to find a father without a name. What she received was so much more. Fabulous love story!!!

I enjoyed everything about this book. The southern setting, the quirky characters, the mysteries, the secrets. I love that Blue and Ellie bond over jazz. It’s a very sweet story. You will enjoy it!,

This story is so complex, but it holds your attention all the way through. The setting of this story originaly takes place during the Vietnam war, and here it is now 30 some odd years later, when Ellie is contracted to write a book about a jazz singer who mysterious disappears right after having one of the most successful nights of her career. Through the exploring and digging up missing pieces of Mabel's short life and of the many secrets still untold, Ellie unexpectedly finds out some of her own. I especially loved the interaction between all of the characters, which felt so real. And all of the secondary characters were just as intriguing as the key players of this story. BTW- I would have never expected the story to unfold like it did. Never. I was just as surprised as many of you probably were at the outcome of this story. I thoroughly enjoyed that part.Something that bothered me though, was the very end. I don't know if all of the story didn't download to my device, or if the author intensionally left us a teaser. Either way, it was a great story.

Marleen's Review:Every book I’ve read by Barbara Samuel so far has been simply mesmerizing and enchanting. Same here with “In The Midnight Rain”. The whole story, from start to finish, is so atmospheric, palpable, and, as a reader, you can only be absorbed by it. The story just spoke to all my senses.In a nutshell, a biographer of blues singers, Ellie Connor, travels to a very small town called Gideon (I think in east Texas close to Louisiana border), where she will work on the biography of Mabel Beauvais, a Gideon native female blues singer who suddenly vanished from the face of the earth in 1952. She’s been writing online for about a year with Dr. Laurence Reynard, living in Gideon. Laurence, nicknamed “Blue” is also a blues music aficionado. The Dr. stands for doctor in botany. Blue who experiments and grows orchids in his greenhouses on his property. As it happens, when meeting him, Blue is not what Ellie expected. He’s much younger (and better looking) than she’d imagined. But Blue is foremost a lost soul, a melancholy man, who had an immense share of losses in his young life.I was instantly attracted by the beauty of the scenery; the nature that surrounded Blue's property, the flowers, the trees, the earth, but also the small town of Gideon. So inviting. I wished I could visit.Music plays an important role in this story and that's something I can relate to, being a music lover. Ellie’s love for music was something that spoke to me on a very pure level. Ellie’s a wonderful young woman. She is so strong in the face of adversity. I admired that. While she’s in Gideon, she also looking for her Dad, knowing her deceased Mom spent the summer of 1969 in Gideon, and then came back home pregnant only to leave Ellie when she was 6 months old, to be raised by her grandma.The Vietnam war connection was broached in an touching way. In Gideon, people still remember all the young men that went to Vietnam and never came back. The strength of the more "elderly" women is another aspect of this book that compelled me. From Ellie’s grandmother who raised her, to the townswomen who stood by Ellie, all were splendid.This is an amazing book about love and family, and well, I just enjoyed it tremendously.

I so enjoyed this book, I wanted to share with you the pleasure (and pain) I got from reading it. I rarely read a book at one sitting, but this held me right through a day and well into a night. The characters were so well projected that you felt one with them. Even though the Vietnam war is long gone it is still affecting the lives of the families affected by it. It was well documented and I learnt a lot of what it is like to live among that close knit community.

The descriptions of the characters make for an easily formed picture in the mind. The scenery described is also stunning (In my head anyway) . The story ending becomes a little predictable as you move through the book - but that just mirrors life. The story line itself does take some believing, but isn't that why we read books? All told, an entertaining book. I will consider getting further books by this author.

I really enjoyed this book and when I got to about 70% of it, I thought there was yet more to come. Sadly the author wrapped it up way too quickly and 25% of the 'book' is dedicated to excerpts from her other books. It was like she though carefully about the characters and storyline and then didn't know how to end it so just stopped. Disappointing.

This is such an interesting story of Ellie who sets out to research and write a biography of a blues singer but who also has another agenda. She meets Blue, a beautiful but troubled man. The storyline is intriguing and its only right at the end that everything is revealed. I will definately be looking for more of her books.