WINDS OF CHANGE by Linda A. B. Davis

I don’t know how many of you have read the Alvin Maker books by Orson Scott Card, but this story by Davis made me want to read them all over again.

This story is told though the eyes of a young deformed girl who has the ability to call the wind. Her mother taught her how. In this story only men practice the sacred magic of weather control, specifically rainmaking.

I think that this story deserves an after school special trailer:

In a land ravaged with drought, its people wait for rain; rain that will not come unless called by one of the special few, a rainmaker; however, he has yet to be tested. Wait, there is another. But, dare she expose her talent; will she trust in her mother’s wisdom and save this year’s harvest or will she choose the easy road of obscurity.

The ending did leave me wanting more. I really wanted to know what happened next. People have a real bad tendency to promise something to get something in the short run, but quickly forget that promise, the kind that tend to go like: “Save my leg Jesus and I will always love you” and “Oh God, let the Vikings win the Super Bowl and I will convert nations for you.”

Anyway, this is a good story about how a little girl with a humbling birth defect learns trust in herself.

Something Magic This Way Comes is available March 4, 2008. You should preorder a copy.More reviews of the stories in this volume will be forthcoming as I finish them.

Thank you The Fantasy & Sci-Fi Lovin' Book Review for sending this book on to me.

Davis, Linda A. B. “Winds of Change.” Something Magic This Way Comes. Ed. Martin H. Greenberg and Sarah A. Hoyt. New York: DAW, 2008.