It is 1903 in the English countryside when Robbie, a shy young art student, meets the twenty-nine-year-old Anton who is running from memories of his brutal childhood and failed marriage. Within months, they begin a love affair that will never let them go. Robbie grows into an accomplished portraitist in the vivid London art world with the help of Anton’s enchanting former wife, while Anton turns from his inherited wealth and connections to improve the conditions of the poor. But it is the Edwardian Era, and the law sentences homosexual men to prison with hard labor, following the tragic experience of Oscar Wilde. As Robbie and Anton’s commitment to each other grows, the world about them turns to a more dangerous place.

Praise for The Boy in the Rain

"The Boy in the Rain is a love story of the highest order, so powerful for advancing important issues from a historical perspective in Edwardian England, but more significantly for vividly and elegantly capturing the passion, beauty and despair of a forbidden (at the time) affair between two men....The writing is exquisite, capturing their every feeling and breath. …makes one feel a spectrum of sensations, that challenges the mind, that creates characters as real as fiction can be, and shows us the great joy and intoxication of astute and descriptive writing."

- Jim Alkon, BookTrib.

"... a beautifully written, haunting portrait of a complicated, decade-long romance between two men who meet during the Edwardian England era...Cowell's melodic, poetic prose drips with intensity and sentiment, and her descriptions of England's physical and political atmosphere are pointed and impressive. Readers will find themselves immersed in the lives of these men..."

- Chrstopher Verleger, EdgeMedia Gay Culture

"The climbing trellises in bloom; the paved pathways in summer rain; the "heavy" stone church with its kindly, accepting vicar and the unspoken understanding of the neighborhood … Cowell very deftly creates a kind of rural Edwardian Eden specifically so she can shatter it and get everybody longing to put it back together. There are hints of Brideshead Revisited in this, but since The Boy in the Rain is a furtive gay romance set in Edwardian England, it's EM Forster's Howards End that sets a good deal of the tone for this narrative (and of course Maurice that grounds its theme). But the story itself is carefully crafted and often quite moving."

- Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly

“With sensitivity and grace, The Boy in the Rain ushers the once hidden lives of a previous century’s queer men out of the shadows and immerses them in the tides of history. Stephanie Cowell writes with addictive momentum and passion as well as a keen eye for the telling detail.”

- Christopher Rice, New York Times bestselling author

“The Boy in the Rain transports us to another time and place in this powerful, sensual and lyrical novel that literally took my breath away―the love is so visceral, the pain so deep, the beauty so real, and the danger so palpable!”

- NYT bestseller, M.J. Rose, author of The Last Tiara

“A masterpiece of longing, love, and empathy.”

- Lauren B. Davis, author of Even So, The Empty Room, Our Daily Bread and others

“Shadows of E.M. Forster and Oscar Wilde haunt this tender, moving novel of illicit passion and enduring love. I was captivated by both the self-discovery of young artist Robbie and the redemption of his lover Anton, tormented by past regrets. A vividly immersive portrayal of the heady joys of youthful romance and the heartbreaking cruelties of Edwardian England.”

- Myrlin A. Hermes, author of The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet

“A tender and immersive love story such as you’ve never read before… Cowell evokes the glamor as well as the underbelly of Edwardian England, a place rife with prejudice and social injustice, where the book’s protagonists—a working-class artist and a well-born socialist crusader—search for love, meaning, and redemption. The characters, the story, and the landscape are utterly immersive, utterly compelling.”

- Barbara Quick, author of Vivaldi’s Virgins and What Disappears

“Poignant, engrossing, and evocative. I know of no writer who captures place, period, and emotion better than Stephanie Cowell. “

- Mitchell James Kaplan, author of Rhapsody and Into the Unbounded Night

“At its core The Boy in the Rain is a sweeping love story–complex, bittersweet–reminiscent of Wuthering Heights.”

- Janet Goldberg, author of The Proprietor’s Song

“The Boy in the Rain is a poignant love story about two Englishmen set at the beginning of the twentieth century when homosexuality was a crime. As Robbie tries to launch a career in portraiture, Anton fights his demons to give voice to his socialist beliefs. How they collide, come apart, and try to rekindle their romance against forbidden yearnings, kept me turning the pages.”

- Martha Anne Toll, winner of the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction, and author of Three Muses

“The Boy in the Rain is a novel I hated to put down and was sorry to see end. It's rare for that alone, but it's also an important novel about injustices that linger on today. Stephanie Cowell is a wonderful writer.”

- Sandra Gulland, author of the internationally bestselling Josephine B. Trilogy

“Stephanie Cowell’s The Boy in the Rain centers on two young men, worlds apart in experience, navigating a passionate, once-in-a-lifetime romance against the backdrop of England in the first decade of the 20th century. Their love unexpectedly mirroring both the ecstasies and the agonies of a world on the brink of momentous change.”

- Lance Ringel, author of Flower of Iowa and Floridian Nights, Foreword Reviews INDIES Finalist in the Romance category and Lambda Literary Award Finalist

"Stephanie Cowell has delivered a wonderful work, bringing into focus some key political and sexual issues of the time, from the backrooms of strategy to the stench of prostitution, while bringing readers as close as the written word is able into the soul of a loving, gripping relationship, the outcome of which is filled with uncertainty."

- BookTrib [read entire review]

"... a beautifully written, haunting portrait of a complicated, decade-long romance between two men who meet during the Edwardian England era...Cowell's melodic, poetic prose drips with intensity and sentiment, and her descriptions of England's physical and political atmosphere are pointed and impressive. Readers will find themselves immersed in the lives of these men..."

- Edge Media Network [read entire review]