The author of many books, including the acclaimed Rain of Gold, Victor Villasenor in Beyond Rain of Gold gives us a memoir chronicling his struggles to get his previous novels published as well as his growing awareness of the spirit realm. The story starts with the funeral of Villasenor’s father, where the author learns from tales told by his relatives that his father was more powerful and had more wisdom than the author had previously realized. He also recounts his struggles to get his books published (including 265 rejections for Rain of Gold, which then went on to become a national best seller), and through a series of visitations and conversations with his father’s spirit, along with many visits with publishers and agents, he receives guidance and tips that eventually lead to publishing success. As the now-published author becomes successful and gives talks across the country, primarily about his book Rain of Gold, he also receives enlightenment from his father’s spirit on the nature of the universe.

Though I have not read Rain of Gold, my guess is that if you liked that book, then you may enjoy Beyond Rain of Gold. You might also appreciate Beyond Rain of Gold if you are heavily into New Age religions, as the author sketches his own ideas of life and the afterlife, even detailing yearly cycles of growth for men and women. For example, age 26 is said by the author to be the age of our full male or female power, and at age 39 women “stop caring what men think and come into their own power.”

On the positive side, I give this book three stars (out of five) mainly because the author seems sincere in cultivating an interest in all people to celebrate and investigate the spiritual beliefs of their ancestors, and I agree with the author’s stance that an appreciation of male as well as female leadership strengths and other abilities should be acknowledged and cultivated. I also appreciate the author’s passion and commitment to his family’s ancestors (though the memoir leaves it unclear whether he will disrupt his own family by divorcing his wife and becoming estranged from his children due to his new spiritual insights).

As a memoir though, I had a lot of difficulty with the style of the writing itself. The author USES ALL CAPS frequently, sometimes even with exclamation marks, to emphasize when a character is talking excitedly, and the characters in this book are often really excited, often for paragraphs at a time! Rather than have the characters indicate emotion or excitement through prose descriptions of their actions (the cardinal writing rule–show, don’t tell), the characters here are often limited to just a combination of four action beats: tears falling down their faces, inhaling deeply, gripping their foreheads when thinking hard, and blowing out air before talking. For example, tears fall down a character’s face on pages 34, 36, 37, 38, and 39 (just to pick a small window of pages, but the tears fall throughout the book). While I can appreciate that the author wants to portray a character as being upset or emotional, just saying “tears fall” is a bit of an easy writing crutch used to artificially flag these emotions, and after seeing this phrase used page after page the reader is jarred from the story being told and desensitized to the character’s actual emotions and feelings. But these writing crutches also point to a larger problem for the memoir as a whole–the characters are often shallowly drawn, and an underlying tone of bitterness throughout the book erodes what could have been an uplifting and meaningful message about spiritual commonality, once the dogmas of people’s specific religions are removed.

The story itself is told with flashbacks that are sometimes confusing and unexpected, which leads to a bit of a chaotic feel to the pacing. And as the author in the story achieves greater synchrony with the spirit world, the story loses some credibility as a serious memoir. For example, in one passage the author, following spirit Indian Guides on horseback, drives into the rocky wilds of California with his wife. They are directed into an area where he is told by his Spirit Guides to disrobe and sniff Mother Earth like a dog. He does this, then gets aroused, wants to make love to the dirt, hears the stones laughing at him, giggles, orgasms, and hears spirits playing music while dancers whirl around him. He passes out, but when he awakes, the first thing his wife asks him is, “Are we going back to the car now?”

So my sense is that fans of Rain of Gold or New Age religions may enjoy Beyond Rain of Gold, but other readers may need some patience to get beyond a mundane writing style and an erratic story arc.

Available from Amazon: Beyond Rain of Gold