Let the Tornado Come: A Memoir

Hailed as a “clear-eyed book written with poetry and compassion” by The Boston Globe, Let the Tornado Come is the “lyrical debut memoir” (Kirkus Reviews) of a runaway child, the woman she became, and the horse that set her free.

When Rita Zoey Chin was eleven years old, she began running away from home. Her parents’ violence and neglect drove her onto the streets in search of a better life, but what she found instead was a dangerous world of drugs and predatory men—as well as the occasional kindness of strangers. As she hits bottom and then learns to forge a new life for herself, all of her dreams of freedom and beauty pivot on a single, precious memory: a herd of horses running along a roadside fence.

A few years later, Rita—now a prizewinning poet and wife of a successful neurosurgeon—appears to have triumphed over her harrowing childhood, until she is struck with a series of debilitating panic attacks that threaten her comfortable new life. Ultimately, it is the memory of those hoofbeats, and the chance arrival of a spirited, endearing horse named Claret who has a difficult history himself, that will finally save her.

“A near euphoric ode to the human spirit” (Huffington Post), Let the Tornado Come is about pulling yourself up out of the dark and discovering that the greatest escape lies not in running from, but turning towards, those things that frighten you the most; it is “luminous…A haunting yet hopeful saga that shows how trauma and fear can transform themselves into enduring strength” (Publishers Weekly).