Maggie Mackellar’s stunning new memoir, When It Rains, narrates her journey through the disorienting landscape of loss and mourning. As a young academic, pregnant with her second child and uncomplicatedly in love with her athletic husband, the boundaries of Mackellar’s world seem fairly secure. With her husband’s sudden psychic disintegration and suicide, the foundations of that world collapse. She gives birth to a son, struggles to juggle single motherhood and an academic career, and, with her mother’s help, learns to appreciate small moments of beauty amid the pain.