The year is 1939 and Frostfree, Florida, has not seen rain in months. If the orange groves don't get some moisture soon, many families, including Pidge's, could lose their farms. But if there's one thing this town has plenty of, it's hope. Right now their hope rests in a sixty-seven-year-old Rainmaker from Mississippi who claims she can coax rain from the sky. Pidge has hopes of her own, too: hope that her brother, Little Jack, will stay out of trouble; hope that her father will lose interest in the pretty church organist; hope that she can gain some understanding of her mother's death. With clarity, and compassion, Alison Jackson explores the life-changing summer of a young girl on the brink of adolescence.