For lovers of Elizabeth Acevedo and Angie Cruz comes this extraordinary novel, the first ever written by a Uruguayan-Australian author. The power of Hailstones Fell without Rain lies in its pacy, multi-generational story and its memorable, wise and sharply funny characters. Hailstones Fell without Rain is a dazzling, multilayered and often laugh-out-loud story about three generations of working-class women from one family – Graciela, Chula and Rita – who, for various reasons, are separated from one another at the start. Graciela is a Uruguayan migrant struggling to raise her three daughters in Western Sydney, whose life feels like just one bill after another, and she’s reaching breaking point. Chula is Graciela’s elderly aunt, a Uruguayan who lived through the civic military coup of 1973 and is still waiting for justice. And Rita is Graciela’s eldest daughter, who is trying to escape her family’s pressures and prejudices while being trapped by racism at work and indelibly tied to the ghosts of her mother’s past. As the novel moves across time and place, from Western Sydney to Uruguay and back again, we realise that buried secrets and family trauma always, ultimately, resurface but also that it’s possible for broken connections to mend.
