Greeley & Stone, Publishers

Independent Social Issues Journalism


Rain of Ruin
by Mark Kelley
Rain of Ruin Book Cover
About The book
Military leaders and historians have told the story of the atomic bomb. But the official accounts never focus on the thousands of ordinary Americans who helped make it happen. Rain of Ruin tells the story from their point of view for the first time. It follows Agnes Jenkins Flaherty, an eighteen-year-old country girl, as she takes her devout religious faith and towering sense of responsibility to wartime Washington, D.C. to work with the Manhattan Project. She quickly finds love in the city, but her budding romance is overshadowed by a growing sense of terror when she learns, from the Top Secret documents crossing her desk, that project scientists think setting off the bomb might destroy the earth. Agnes escapes that prospect, but not the heartbreaking disappointment and tragedy that follow.
About the Author

Dr. Mark Kelley is a veteran of 25 years in broadcast news, both radio and television. He has worked as a news producer, reporter, and until June 1999, he served as main anchor for WNDU-TV in South Bend, Ind.

Kelley attended Houghton College for two years, graduated with a B.A. from the State University of New York at Geneseo, and later earned an M.S. in telecommunications and a Ph.D. in mass communications from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.

He has taught at Goshen College, Syracuse University, the University of Maine in Orono, and is currently director of journalism at the New England School of Communications in Bangor, Maine.

He is the author of three books: Berman’s Lament (novel, 2000, available from the author), Engaging News Media: A Practical Guide for People of Faith (Cowley Publications, 2006), and Rain of Ruin (2011).

Kelley is married to his high school sweetheart, Marty. They have two grown children and (so far) four grandsons. They live in Orono, Maine, where they continue to experience life, as the sign says, the way it should be.
Critical Acclaim

“The most destructive force in the twentieth century still had paper work. Rain of Ruin: The Stirring Account of a Young Woman’s Life as a Clerk for the Top Secret Manhattan Project is a novel from Mark Kelley, telling the tale of Agnes Jenkins Flaherty, an 18 year old girl brought in for secretary work close to the Manhattan Project, seeing bits and pieces of a secret no one intends for her to see. A unique personal story with a creative backdrop, Rain of Ruin is a strong addition to any historical fiction collection.”  —Midwest Book Review: MBR Bookwatch, April 2012
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