59 pages • 1 hour read
Ann M. MartinRain Reign
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 35-44Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 35 Summary: “The Thing I Have to Do”
Rose and Weldon arrive back at Rose’s house with Rain, and Wesley is surprised but not excited that Rain is back. Wesley and Weldon discuss the microchip situation while Rose goes into the house with Rain. As happy as she is that Rain is back, Rose feels that the dog still belongs to her past owners. Rose decides that she needs to try and find them on her own using their contact information from the microchip form.
Chapters 36-37 Summary: “Mrs. Kushel’s Helpful Suggestions” and “Where Rain Used to Live”
Rose goes to school early one day and asks her teacher Mrs. Kushel how to connect a lost dog with its owners. She keeps the situation hypothetical, not wanting her teacher to know that the dog in question is Rain. Mrs. Kushel gives her some ideas and offers to help her publicize information. Because she would have to take a picture of Rain for “Found Dog” posters, Rose decides to wait to involve her teacher in her search for Rain’s owners. However, she and Weldon drive to the address listed in the microchip information and find a destroyed house site without anyone living there.
Chapter 38 Summary: “The General Store in Gloverstown”
On their way out of Rain’s past owners’ town, Rose and Weldon stop at a general store and ask the clerk if he knows the owners. The clerk says he remembers them but didn’t know them well. He tells them that the owners had relatives in the area and might still be around, but he doesn’t know. As they’re about to leave the store, Rose sees a local newspaper that she could put an ad in to spread the word about Rain.
Chapter 39 Summary: “Found: Blond Female Dog”
About six weeks after visiting Rain’s owners’ town, Rose decides to again enlist Mrs. Kushel’s help, this time telling her that the dog is Rain. Mrs. Kushel gets one of her friends, a local journalist, to write an article about Rose’s search. The journalist comes and interviews Rose about Rain a few days later.
Chapter 40 Summary: “Parvani Finds a Homonym”
Parvani plays Rose’s homonym game in class, making Rose feel understood and appreciated. A budding friendship seems to be forming between the two girls.
Chapter 41 Summary: “My Father Makes a Mistake with Pronouns”
When the article about Rain appears in the newspaper, Wesley angrily demands to know why his family’s “private business” is appearing in public. Mrs. Kushel did call to talk to Wesley about the article, but he didn’t pay attention to the conversation and continued to watch TV during the phone call. Rose suggests they call Weldon and talk to him about it, and during his conversation with his brother, Wesley reluctantly agrees not to cause trouble about the article. However, he angrily tells Rose that she should be happy that Rain is back home and not try to find her old owners.
Chapter 42 Summary: “Protecting Rain”
The altercation between Rose and Wesley from the previous chapter continues. Wesley advances towards Rose in a menacing manner, and Rain attacks him. Wesley hits the dog instead of Rose, and Rose grabs Rain and gets under the kitchen table to evade her father. Wesley leaves and, as he does so, threatens to harm Rain again if Rose tells anyone about his outburst.
Chapter 43 Summary: “What Mrs. Kushel Says”
Several weeks after the fight with her father, Rose learns from Mrs. Kushel that Rain’s previous owners saw the article and got in touch with the shelter. They want Rain back, and Rose is willing to give her up even though she loves the dog very much. Her motivation to give Rain back to her owners is partially to protect her from Wesley’s abuse, since she feels that he is a danger to Rain.
Chapter 44 Summary: “Good-bye”
Rose and Weldon take Rain back to the shelter where she was found, where the old owners, a couple with two children, are waiting. The owners are emotionally reunited with Rain, and Rose says her goodbyes. She is reassured by the loving relationship between Rain and the family but devastated to be losing her beloved pet.
Chapters 35-44 Analysis
Rose performs her climactic act of selflessness in this section of the book, giving up her beloved dog so that she can return to her original owners. Although Rose believes she is doing this because she wants to follow the rules in a way that seems fair to her, her empathy for Rain’s owners and her emotional understanding of feeling panicked and distraught about losing Rain also play a role in her decision. Martin portrays Rose’s motivations in a way that connects them to fundamental human feelings of empathy and connection. (However, the assumption that neurotypical emotional responses are the only “correct” way to respond for all people is questioned by some in the disability community—see Rose’s section in the Character Analysis for more on this topic.)
Wesley’s defensiveness about Rain and his actions surrounding the dog, from acquiring her to letting her out during the storm to Rose’s search after she goes missing, are explained in this section of the book. Wesley is proud of getting Rain for Rose because he views it as a good thing he did for his daughter, a gesture that aligns with what he believes a loving parent would do. However, he didn’t try to find out if Rain had owners who were searching for her. He doesn’t accept responsibility or apologize to Rose for letting Rain out during the storm, and he refuses to participate in Rose’s search for the dog, with Weldon being the one to step in and help her. Rain becomes symbolic of Wesley’s parenting, which Martin presents with ambiguity: Wesley intends to do a good thing for Rose but fails to reinforce his gesture with further actions. Rose’s decision to give Rain back to her old owners is therefore a subtle criticism of Wesley himself, since he gave the dog to his daughter.
Mrs. Kushel, Rose’s teacher, takes on a more prominent role in the story in this section. Rose reaches out to her teacher to help her with the lost dog dilemma, a significant gesture toward another female character in a book dominated by Rose’s relationships with Wesley and Weldon. Mrs. Kushel helps Rose by contacting her journalist friend to come and interview her and acts as a mediator between Rose and her father as she asks Wesley’s permission to run the article. This help enables Rose’s efforts to go ahead with her search for Rain’s owners. By acting in these nurturing ways, Mrs. Kushel thus becomes a pseudo-maternal figure who both symbolically calls attention to Rose’s mother’s absence and throws Wesley’s callousness toward his daughter into sharp relief. This dynamic sets the stage for the resolution of the book, in which Rose ends up living with Weldon, who has always been the nurturing figure in her life.
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