Hailstones Fell Without Rain

For lovers of Elizabeth Acevedo and Angie Cruz comes this extraordinary debut novel from Uruguayan-Australian author Natalia Figueroa Barroso. The power of Hailstones Fell Without Rain lies in its pacy, multi-generational story and its memorable, wise and sharply funny characters.

Graciela is a Uruguayan migrant struggling to raise her three daughters in Western Sydney — her life feels like just one bill after another, and she's reaching breaking point. Chula, her elderly aunt, is still waiting for justice after living through the civic-military coup of 1973 in Uruguay. And Rita, Graciela's eldest daughter, wants to escape the constraints of her family but finds herself indelibly tied to the ghosts of her mother's past.

Dazzling, multilayered and often laugh-out-loud funny, Hailstones Fell Without Rain tells the story of these three indomitable women from one working-class family. 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.