In the Days of Rain: A Daughter, a Father, a Cult

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In Stott’s case, her dying father asks for her help in documenting his own role as an influential (and intimidating) preacher in the Exclusive Brethren, the ultra-hardline Christian fundamentalist creationist sect (still active today) into which Stott was born. There is quite a bit of history about the closed brethren group she belonged to, and although I could see this was needed for background, it was how the rules affected individuals (often with tragic consequences) and her family in particular that I was most interested in. Cultists were guided with such severe leadership, that people committed suicide, murdered and family breakups as people left the cult and were shunned by their family, never to talk to them again. If you were not “in the spirit”, or even doubted certain orthodoxies, you would be shunned, not only by your community, but by your family, who could no longer eat or associate with you.

Aged six, Rebecca Stott spent her time listening out for the sound of Satan’s hooves on the paving stones of Brighton.Also similar is the way the Exclusive Brethren "withdraw from" former members (which is akin to excommunicating them) at the drop of a hat and how the FLDS routinely expel teenage boys from their community for daring to compete with the old men for teenage wives.

Trapped in this parallel reality, Stott wasn’t even aware of the moon landings, saying: “We were of course living on a kind of satellite planet of our own.Then He will send rain for the seed that you have sown in the ground, and the food that comes from your land will be rich and plentiful. As can be seen in the map below, the wettest parts of the UK are concentrated in mountainous regions with observation sites in Snowdonia, the Lake District and the Scottish Highlands all receiving more than 4 metres of rainfall in a year. There was a spate of Brethren suicides, and a mass exodus in 1970 when a sex scandal involving JT Junior broke. In a terrifying passage echoing Margaret Atwood’s dystopian The Handmaid’s Tale, Stott describes how one of her female relatives was sent to an asylum for decades, ostensibly because she was epileptic, but also because she was “wilful”. Ask rain from the LORD in the season of the spring rain, from the LORD who makes the storm clouds, who gives showers of rain to you, the vegetation in the field to everyone.

Rebecca’s father, Robert, is dying of cancer as the book starts but wants his story to be known by the whole world as a warning not to get 'caught up in' groups like the Exclusive Brethren. A memoir exploring Stott’s childhood in the Exclusive Brethren, a very strict Christian sect that became a cult in the ’60s and was rocked by a sex scandal in the ’70s. Evans says that even if you’re tempted to shut off the lights and crawl into bed during a rainstorm, make the choice to turn on the lights instead.Rebecca Stott was born in Cambridge in 1964 and raised in Brighton in a large Plymouth Brethren community. Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 52 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". A father-daughter story that tells of the the author's experience growing up in the Exclusive Brethren, a fundamentalist, separatist Christian cult, from the author of the national bestseller Ghostwalk. In The Days Of Rain is thus a sometimes uneasy amalgam of Rebecca’s autobiography and her father’s, a family saga, and a history of The Exclusive Brethren with all its multiple schisms, and schisms within schisms, stretching way back to the early 19th century. When he uttereth his voice, there is a multitude of waters in the heavens, and he causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth; he maketh lightnings with rain, and bringeth forth the wind out of his treasures.

But while the historian in her is merciless in exposing the cruelties and corruption involved, Rebecca the child also lights up the book, existing in a world of vivid play, dreams, even nightmares, so passionate and imaginative that it helps explain how she survived, and—even more miraculous—found the compassion and understanding to do justice to the story of her father and the painful family life he created. Her father eventually left the group, and expressed great regrets at the end of his life about his role in enforcing the sect’s codes of behavior. As a novelist, she makes the tale dramatic … As an essayist, Stott weaves ideas together with ease and economy.Those who refused to conform to these rules were to be expelled, and prevented from making any sort of contact with their families. It gives people vitality, can [contribute] to self-esteem, and increases endorphins that have a positive effect on the mood. The idea of living in 1970 and not even having heard of the Beatles, much less listened to their music, was hard for me to fathom. If family were non-members they were not to eat with them and later on were not even allowed to live with them.