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Colton Bowman finds his brother embarrassing. Austin has never spoken. His parents suspect that he might be autistic, though he lacks a formal diagnosis. He enjoys watching the rain through the windows and has demonstrated some remarkable artistic talents. Colton—a very ordinary young man who dreads school, enjoys video games, and has a volatile temper—snaps at Austin one day after a friend calls him a vile word. That same day, Austin steps outside and disappears into the rain. For years, there has been no trace of him.
The book then follows Colton and his family during those years as they struggle to make sense of Austin’s absence. Colton quits playing games and learns to curb his tongue. He hates himself for what he said to Austin during their final encounter. When he meets a girl from Hawaii whose brother also vanished from her home on a rainy day, he begins to suspect there might be a mystical explanation for the disappearances. Perhaps he was abducted by beings from another world, or perhaps, as the girl says, “The rain took him.” Soon, the Department of Homeland Security and even CNN are involved.
Bowler makes the wise choice to keep the story centered on Colton’s coming of age. This isn’t a book about aliens; it’s a story about having someone in your family whom you don’t understand, but whom you love deeply, and about all the ways in which grief warps and matures us. Colton’s fixation on UFOs is treated as a realistic coping mechanism by a teenager attempting to reckon with the inscrutable. Colton’s first-person narrative voice evokes the young adult novels of Bruce Coville, R. L. Stine, and Christopher Pike, and shares some of the warmth and humanism of those authors. This is a wise book with a sensitive heart.