num_pages: 340
description: Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling is a tough-as-nails account of being down and out, but never down for good—a Dostoyevskian tale of crime, punishment, and the pursuit of an ever-elusive redemption. The novel follows the adventures of Jack Levitt, an orphaned teenager living off his wits in the fleabag hotels and seedy pool halls of Portland, Oregon. Jack befriends Billy Lancing, a young black runaway and pool hustler extraordinaire. A heist gone wrong gets Jack sent to reform school, from which he emerges embittered by abuse and solitary conﬁnement. In the meantime Billy has joined the middle class—married, fathered a son, acquired a business and a mistress. But neither Jack nor Billy can escape their troubled pasts, and they will meet again in San Quentin before their strange double drama comes to a violent and revelatory end.
language: English
title: Hard Rain Falling
titlecomplete: Hard Rain Falling
characters: Jack Levitt, Billy Lancing
genres: 20th Century, Literature, Crime, American, Classics, Literary Fiction, Novels, Noir, Fiction, Mystery
ratings_count: 5074
places: California, Portland, Oregon
publisher: Ballantine Books